I would like to extend a congratulations to all the RKC’s that were just promoted but to 2 in particular.
Jordan Vezina was promoted to Team Leader and he earned it. He is someone that I steal directly from because his progression method of teaching the snatch is unsurpassed. I don’t think the dude sleeps because he is constantly on the forum helping people out. Here is what Dragondoor says about Team Leaders.
“The position of RKC Team Leader is also by invitation only. The RKC Team Leader has displayed consistently strong teaching skills over a number of years and demonstrates a very high level of physical skill in their kettlebell practice. RKC Team Leaders teach on a limited basis at the RKC instructor certifications.”
Now the next big congratulations goes out to someone that is directly responsible for me joining the RKC. I know I have said this story a hundred times but in case you haven’t heard it. I was at a Ryan Lee event and met this dude in a bar and shared a beer with him. During conversations I had mentioned what a big fan I was of kettlebells and books by Pavel and Brett Jones. Later on that weekend he takes a small frying pan, rolls it up with his bare hands, snaps the handle off and repeats that with a medium size frying pan. Then takes a large frying pan and rolls it around the first 2 and hands it to me and says “When are you going to join us as an RKC?” Not so much a question as it was a command. That man is Dave “the Irontamer” Whitley then Senior RKC and now Master RKC. That set the fire that began my training program where I trained for the RKC and passed. I don’t know why it took that to inspire me since RKC’s were the trainers I already looked up to. Here is what Dragondoor says about Master RKC’s
“Master RKCs are appointed after extensive experience as a Senior RKC and after demonstrating the highest levels of integrity, commitment, teaching skills, leadership and personal physical ability. Master RKCs are the only RKCs with the authority to teach Dragon Door approved RKC certification workshops on their own. Dragon Door now offers in-house RKC certifications for appropriate organizations.” (that fits Dave like a glove)
Dave is also the guy who I was able to meet oldetime strongmen Dennis Rogers, Slim Farmin and Joe Rollino (RIP) through.
And as weird as this sounds every time I hang around Dave I become stronger even though we don’t train together. It’s like I get stronger through osmosis.
Well I just got back from Ryan Lee’s second continuity summit yesterday. Its always fun for me to be at these things because I learn a lot of great stuff and meet a lot of great people. You may have heard me tell the story about how SrRKC Dave Whitley rolled up a bunch of frying pans with his bare hands (beast!) hand them to me and say join the RKC which I did. It was at a Ryan Lee event that I met the Underground Strength Coach Zach EvanEsh. Brian Edmondson is another one I really enjoy joking around with who I met last year (and we all donated money and built a school in Africa). It was at a Ryan Lee event as well that I hung out with Vince Delmonte who became a friend of mine though I rarely get to see him since we don’t live in the same country. Dr. K who I also became friends with through Arnel Ricafranca was in attendance and just released a program called Double Edged Fat Loss which looks pretty badass. I met a lot of people I hadn’t heard of before and I’ll have to go through my business cards to remember their names (I was telling a police officer earlier I would have made a terrible cop because I am horrid at remembering names and faces.) Pavel has a gift at remembering faces and so does Dennis who works behind the scenes of the RKC…and speaking of RKC’s
I was just kind of chilling while Arnel was talking to somebody. I was simply waiting for a brake in the conversation so I could insert a joke when appropriate when somebody who was obviously strong said..”you are Eric Moss…are you the kettlebell guy?”
“Yeah thats me”
“Hi I am Geoff Neupert SrRKC” whoa in the flesh. Geoff Neupert the man behind the Kettlebell Secrets series that I was tuning into just about every week when I had sound on my computer. He must have seen my name in the RKC only forum. I can’t really explain why but I just think its wild that he recognized me and not the other way around. I showed him my website for the kb nitro program and his comment was…
“Wow. You are ripped.”
yes I am ripped. I have been ripped for about 3 years. I wasn’t always ripped but once I got it I maintained it because I know how much of a pain in the ass it is. I walk around ripped 24 hours a day (well I don’t walk around I do sleep and eat and that sort of thing) 7 days a week three hundred whatever days a year. What is the point of getting it if you aren’t able to keep it?
The nice thing is I don’t have to train for fat loss to keep it. I can concentrate on strength now…because being lean, ripped and strong is cool.
Alright
You know I have been training people for a living for about 6 years or so (doesn’t sound like much when you compare me to the likes of Mike Boyle, Steve Maxwell or Alwyn Cosgrove but the average turnover rate for personal trainers is about a year and a half) and far and about the numero uno request I get is for fat loss and “tummy flattening”. Now a lot of times during the initial interview and assessment and many times during the actual program I hear things like “I have tried everything.”
No you haven’t…well most of you.
For the most part people haven’t tried everything. They will say they tried exercise when yes they did but they didn’t try optimal exercise. Their version of training for fat loss is vastly different then mine. Riding an exercise bike at 50 - 60% of your max heart rate is not trying everything when it comes to fat loss training. Here I will name just a few different ways of training.
Bodybuilding
Strongman
Hardstyle kettlebell
bootcamps
crossfit
spinning
yoga
pilates
aerobics
and more
even within those individual ways of training lies individual programs and obviously some are better then others which if you had read any of my rants in the past you know the kind of thing I favor.
so have you really tried everything? When people say that to me I know intellectually they tried maybe 1 or 2 of those things. Not only are they bullshitting me they are bullshitting themselves. They believe there is no answer.
There is always an answer.
As many times as I had been told “I have tried everything.” the “mutant bride” (as I nicknamed her) is the only one I actually believed. She did all the right things but the fat wasn’t dropping off. She had been to numerous boot-camps, dietitians etc until finally me. The doctors and myself were stumped. I had assigned metabolic kettlebell workouts because we believed her metabolism was running slow and we needed to bring it back up. She had it checked and it was running hot…so in other words the workouts did their job. She increased the volume of her training…still didn’t work. She is preparing for a wedding and I have to say it drove me nearly as crazy as it did her since there is a deadline to meet (and I like to think I am pretty damn good at what I do).
Well recently she found the answer. I won’t go into it because I don’t really think it would be fair to her if I started disclosing her medical history on my blog but that isn’t the point. The point is she NEVER GAVE UP. and now we can start progressing. If you want to be successful in your training you have to keep going. Give it a bit of time and if it isn’t working move onto the next thing. If that doesn’t work move on again. The point is don’t stop trying just because you tried 1 or 2 things and failed. For every question there is an answer. Some answers are easier to find then others but they are out there.
Eric Moss over and out
p.s. I don’t know how long you have been keeping up with me but I had recently announced that I was going to have my Kettlebell Nitro program up and ready to buy by March 5th otherwise fat loss specialist Arnel Ricafranca was going to kick me in the balls and put it on youtube. Well if you are wondering what it is it is a metabolic kettlebell and body weight follow along program that I am designing to get your metabolism running hot just like hers. I promise it will be bad ass as hell and it will take all the guess work out of your fat loss goals (unless the reason you don’t progress is at the cellular level in that case see a doctor…several doctors if that is what it takes)
Alright Eric Moss over and out for real this time.
Here we go again
A couple weeks ago I got a message on my facebook page asking me my thoughts on the new “Insanity Workout”. He had sent me the marketing video that was floating around on youtube and I checked it out and I said it looks to me like a p90x copycat from the way it was being promoted. I told him harder is not necessarily better.
That’s my opinion and I am sticking to it.
What I hadn’t realized was that it was put out by the Beach Body Company which is the same company that put out p90x which would explain why their marketing behind it would be the same. It is also the same company that put out Hip Hop Abs and Turbo Jam and I guess with the explosion of popularity behind p90x they realized the profit potential in that market and decided to run in that direction. Can’t really say I blame them.
Now the attacks begin. First let me say I am doing this critique based upon opinions and biases that I have picked up over the years. First bias is I don’t do aerobics which this program along with the Plyometrics X disc from p90x simply looks like glorified aerobics. You can dress a civilian up in as much Marine Corp attire you want but unless hes been through Marine Corp bootcamp and came out the other side a fighting machine he is no Marine.
Now as for the “secret” behind their Insanity Workout? They say they flipped interval training on it’s head to make it more effective. Wow…why didn’t I think of that. Just take what the top dudes in the industry are doing and do the opposite to get more results. Well sorry it doesn’t work like that. You see you can workout hard, and you can workout long. But you can’t workout hard and long. Your intensity is directly proportional to the length of the workout. If your workout is going to be an hour and a half do you really think you can train at the same intensity as if it were 10 minutes long? The answer is “no”. If I were to take their concept of doing long bouts of intense intervals followed by short rests to a new level of just doing the hard intervals all the way through with no rest…guess what you get. Steady state cardio, something that has been shown inferior for fat loss.
…and speaking of cardio. On just about every disc it is promoted as having cardio in it and yet they want to make you think you are going to build muscle. Cardio doesn’t build muscle unless you are already genetically predisposed to it. And if you are looking for conditioning (which they also promote this as a conditioning program) then go for Kenneth Jay’s Viking Warrior Conditioning. The science behind KJ is sound and blows me away every time I read it. Yes, real science from a real scientist/in the trenches coach/freak of nature in terms of strength and conditioning. (did you notice my bias towards my fellow Kettlebell coaches? it’s because the Party is always right)
Since it is all body weight exercises completely devoid of anything pulling related you will not get the biceps that they do in Insanity. I don’t think you will build anything with it…well maybe some leg muscle but the plyometrics that the beach body company has an infatuation with is not good for building muscle. True plyometrics is a shock tactic for training the nervous system meant to be used sparingly and it doesn’t have enough time to load your muscles with the tension that is necessary for building muscle. Same kind of reason running won’t build your muscles.
If you were going to go with a program from the Beach Body Company I would rather you went with p90x. And as you know I recommend Turbulence Training over p90x since the before and after pictures are about the same across the same timeline even though Turbulence Training has you training about 2 1/2 hours a week while p90x has you train a minimum of 6. While I am on that subject it was the amount of before and after pictures from p90x that had originally caught my attention. I thought to myself “How on earth did they get people to actually stick to the program?” Well the answer is p90x (and insanity also) has a multimillion dollar marketing machine behind it producing an extremely high volume of sales. That’s why p90x is practically a household name and that is why there is over 2 million searches a month on google. Now if you sell close to a million copies do you think you might get a couple people that actually see it through to the end? Yup. It’s not that they have a high rate of compliance…they just have a lot of people doing it….and newsflash healthy eating and exercise together work….not exactly new. Here is my video review comparing the 2 programs
Incidentally did you notice that those 2 programs by the Beach Body Company use negative states of mind to promote their products? Confusion, Insanity…both undesirable traits.
note. I found this in my email because I am on the Underground Strength Coach, Zach EvanEsh’s newsletter. If you don’t know anything about him I’ll just rattle off a couple things. First he is a top of the line, down and dirty, in the trenches strength and conditioning coach. He bears a resemblance to the top MMA star Fedor Emelianenko and he constantly preaches about leading from the front. He is not some keep his ass on the throne while other people go to war but closer to the Spartan ruler King Leonidas that has the blood and guts hanging from his sword. He runs a gym in Edison that is down and dirty, oldschool and awesome. You walk in you look to your left and you see kettlebells, look to your right and you see a row of tractor tires, and anvil, anchor and an I bullshit you not a wrecking ball. So to basically sum it all up…he is no sissy. So without further adieu I’ll present his email.
“Something has been irking me lately and it’s exactly what
I coin The Pussification of America.
Not sure what’s going on in other countries but in the states
we’ve got one too many strained hamstrings, too much “I’m tired”,
too much “I just gotta get my mind into it” B.S. floating around.
Weak Bodies have become common place.
Physical Education is getting crushed in the states, especially in the
middle and high school where one too many PE Teachers (I should
not even call them Physical Education teachers) are allowing the
option to walk on the track and consider this exercise.
NO.
Exercise is what my Dad was doing when he was a young kid
in Romania, that was the REAL PE and this was in the early 60’s.
Here’s a taste of the required “Physical Education” my Dad & each kid had to
perform before being allowed to organize a game. And YES, they
organized games on their OWN!
- Sprints on the track
- Hurdle Jumps on Track
- Throwing of small shot puts
- Gymnastics Movements: tumbling, jumping on, over and off of
objects such as benches, boxes and gymnastics equipment
- Crawling on hands
- Climbing Rope
After the required 30 minutes of organized activity, a large field was available with
various sport activities for the kids to organize:
- Hand Ball
- Soccer
- Basketball
Some kids continued to practice gymnastics, others ran the hurdles and others rotated to and
from the various sports games.
Why do we have Varsity high school athletes unable to perform 10 pull ups, 25 push ups or even
ONE freaking full range of motion bodyweight squat.
I’m ranting… that’s all for now.
More to come later.
Lead from the Front!
–Z–
PS: I left my teaching job behind and now, with my own business and my own gym, I can
create a TRUE Physical Education program through my gym, also known as Physical Culture.
Our athletes run, jump, climb, use Kettlebells, perform Gymanstics drills, etc.
There comes a time in life where you must stop allowing society to do a shitty job
and cheat the health of our kids.
I hope it’s not this embarrassing outside the states.”
He allowed me to post it here because I totally agree with him. This has been coined the xbox generation and it is the single weakest physically and mentally generation to date. Years ago every one was active. Everyone socialized. Compare that to now. I’ll share a couple stories that I am sure I’ve said before but I tend to talk about things more then once. Nobody hears it the first time I say anything anyway.
I used to train this one client early in the morning. Outside of her house is the local bus stop for all the youngsters to go to so they can get to school. One day as we are cooling off after the training session I look out the window and see a row of cars. Yeah it was in the middle of winter but I stood there wondering what was going on. The bus pulls up and all the kids get out to get on board. Now this is annoying for a couple reasons. First off heaven forbid they might get exposed to a little bit of cold. Kids can’t handle the cold??? Toughen the hell up. I was out there everyday in the cold waiting for the bus when I was a kid but it was a time to hang out with my friends..which brings me to my second point. They weren’t even in one car. So here these kids are at a critical time to develop socialization skills and they are each sitting in a different car probably playing a psp while the only socializing they are doing is with mommy and daddy. When I was a kid it was like an episode of Southpark which is one reason that show is so funny to me. Now another thing that annoys me is their school is only about a half mile away. Walk for crying out f’ing loud. What its a little too much exercise??? GRRRR!!! (not to talk about me again but when I was a kid I walked up hill on the way to school and uphill on the way home without shoes, over broken glass and hot coals, in the snow and with poisonous snakes everywhere)
Now the next thing is how often do you see kids outside? Usually the only adventures they are getting is confined to their playstation and the only social interaction they get is through texting and facebook. Not very personal if you ask me. I remember going on all sorts of adventures with my friends when we were kids. We were just like Goonies.
So yeah Zach is trying to rid generation xbox of weakness and I am all for it. I don’t know who you my loyal blog reader is but if you are for it I highly recommend checking out his stuff and to read the whole article here This has to change…It’s pathetic
alright
so you probably read my last blog post where I was rather irritated at the people accusing me of steroids, or testosterone and whatever illegal shortcuts were out there. And yeah people will automatically jump to those conclusions whenever someone achieves something that they weren’t able to. Anyone getting accused of being a fraud is going to be pissed off and I am definitely no exception.
Now one thing one of my “victims” had brought up to me this A.M. (a lady who has strength many men would be envious of…and yes I know she is reading this :D) was that they were being skeptical…which is actually a good thing. She and millions others just like her had been victimized simply for having hopes and dreams of their ideal physique which they are simply searching for a way to do it more efficiently. I really can’t begrudge anyone for being skeptical…especially after viewing this video.
You see the fitness industry is loaded to the gills with scammers. Its right up there with the get rich quick schemes and the penis enlargement scams. Those people make it more difficult for people like me to bring you better ways of training because they automatically go into it thinking everyone is after their wallet without delivering a better service.
It is something thats been there since the very beginning of fitness marketing. Eugene Sandow revolutionized the way we look at physical culture when he started prancing around professionally picking heavy shit over his head, taking off his shirt and making all the girls go ga ga over his physique. Young men wishing they could do the same thing started following his every move. He started selling supplements he had claimed gave him his super strength (1 finger pullups and bent pressing 300lbs overhead). When he became a big hit he talked about a beef extract that helped him digest his food more thoroughly enabling him to load them with strength and power and started marketing that. Years later when steroids hit the scene they actually made similar claims. Sandow also created pieces of training equipment for selling. One was a door cable exerciser and one was a kind of dumbbell with a spring in the middle. The reasoning behind the dumbbell with the spring was that you would have to squeeze your hands tight when exercising to develop the “grit” associated with proper strength training (actually a pretty good concept and one we use while doing presses with the kettlebell). Notice lately supplements that make big promises and training equipment that makes big promises? Start flicking through the channels late at night to see both of those things. So yes it’s good to be skeptical.
On the other hand being overly skeptical has its own inherent problems as well. Sometime last year when I was trying to expand my base from the body transformation kettlebell boot camps to MMA strength and conditioning I started going to different martial arts schools in the area and started offering kettlebell classes to make their fighters stronger and more conditioned. If you lack either of those things in an MMA match unless you beat them in the first round yer gonna get yer ass beat. Well anyways I offered it do a dozen classes in the area. I got the feeling they were just yes’ing me to death and I had offered to put them through a session. I knew that if they just tried it they would immediately see the value of what I had to offer. Nobody tried it. You see as good as some of the traditions are in Martial arts many of them tend to be bound by their traditions. That comes to them at the expense of their arts because now they have a closed mind which will be a detriment to their training. If their idea of conditioning is to run a couple miles while their competitor is doing Master RKC Kenneth Jay’s Viking Warrior Conditioning guess who is going to be better prepared in the conditioning sense. Their skepticism prevented them from taking advantage of what I had to offer.
A couple years back Arnel Ricafranca had just come back from a fitness seminar where they had demonstrated Kettlebells. He had a feeling I would like them (though he admits now he had no idea how much) and he asks me if I had ever heard of one. I said “no” so he came over and showed them to me. I thought they were weird looking but I asked “How do I use it?” Arnel showed me the swing and I tried it. I immediately became a believer because I had an open mind about it and because I had experienced it for myself. I bought books by Pavel because I had an open mind.
So what is ideal? Is it skepticism? Is it trying every new thing no matter how ridiculous it sounds? The answer to both questions is yes…and also no. You see you have to have a certain kind of lens to filter things through. As much crap that’s out there there are also gems and I don’t think you should miss out on the gems because you have to shovel a bunch of shit out of your way. The crap…is the stuff that doesn’t quite make sense and isn’t based on any kind of science or isn’t proven in the trenches. The gems are based on science and make sense…a bonus if they are proven. Yeah its going to have to take a bit of research to be able to separate this from that and determine which is better…this or that but in the end its worth it. Another thing is to find someone trustworthy and take them at their word. I have yet to find either Pavel or Alwyn Cosgrove wrong on anything so typically if they say it I’ll take it at face value. Tony Little, Ryan Shanahan and a bunch of others are bullshit artists and I can smell their stench a mile away (note…I have fallen pray to Tony Little as well as supplement companies…you live and you learn).
Live, learn and for crying out loud pick up the kettlebell and press it
Eric Moss RKC over and out
you know it’s been about 3 years since I went through that 12 week transformation and I am STILL getting accused of bullshitting people and cheating and that sort of thing. They’ll say it wasn’t really 12 weeks, they’ll say I used steriods blah blah blah blah
I know I’ve blogged about this before and hell I’ll blog about it again because if there is one thing that gets me fired up its the people who put others down because they can’t do it themselves. Well a lot of things get me fired up but that’s beside the point.
The fact of the matter is I did do it in 12 weeks and I did it all natural (I did use whey protein but thats not a drug…its a nutritional supplement meant to fill in the gaps missing in our daily nutrition..much like a vitamin pill.) Here are the basics of what I did. Pushups, overhead presses with squats, pullups, kettlebell swings, and rows done in a high intensity metabolic circuit. True it wasn’t all kettlebells but at the time I was still new to the concept of kettlebell training and I fully believe that if I knew then what I know now I could have blasted that fat off even faster then the 12 week time frame it took me. I won’t test it because I have maintained a level of leanness and I refuse to pork up for the sake of being a human guinea pig. A trainer friend of mine did that and ended up fucking up his adrenalin system.
The true secret to my program was hard work (a concept most are unfamiliar with) highly disciplined nutritional compliance (another concept most are unfamiliar with) and not quitting until I had achieved my goal (yet another concept most are unfamiliar with) unless you have some kind of hormone thing that prevents the 3 of those from working together you can expect the same results. But I don’t want to hear your bullshit of bad genetics, or leptin/thyroid deficiency’s unless you have given a program a full out effort and time to work. Yes I know there are exceptions to every rule but I have encountered very few of them. For MOST people its a matter of laziness and excuse making.
So when people themselves want to be ripped and they want to be ripped sooner rather then later they will make the assumption that if they can’t do it no one else can. Maybe just maybe if they had spent less time on the couch making criticisms of others successes they might getup off their fat weak ass and achieve their goals. What I did isn’t anything anyone else shouldn’t be able to accomplish. Bodybuilders have been doing it for years. How? Hard work in the gym, carrying around a cooler of food intended to burn the fat and feed the muscle and not stopping until they are contest ready…not making excuses (yes I am aware many of their successes come from the pharmacy…but not all of them)
Now Mark Twight…the trainer for the actor’s of the movie 300 (an inspiration to me) had spoken on a similar note. When people saw how ripped the actors for the movie were and how fast they got there some people took note of their hard work, proceeded to do the same and got ripped and others sat back on their sofa and said shit like “its testosterone” “its all cgi” “their abs were painted on” etc. Read about it here
On that note…stop being a damn sissy and get to work
So this weekend I am donating $500 worth of personal training sessions to an autism benefit/bridal expo. This event is happening on Sunday at the Meadow Wood Manor in Randolph. Check out there site here. If you are a Bride who needs to get whipped into shape for your wedding kettlebell training is one of the most efficient ways of doing it. One bride I trained using kettlebells needed to lose 2 dress sizes and ended up losing 3 without even realizing it. One of the members of my kettlebell bootcamp lost a dress size in a month from only doing 3 sessions a week that last just a little over 20 minutes. Pretty good right?
Recently ACE validated what we had known for awhile in the RKC. Ballistic swings and snatches melt fat fast because of the high metabolic cost associated with those exercises. The theory is that the quickness of the movements and the fact that they are total body is what causes such fast fat loss. Burning 600 calories in a 20 minute session is not unheard of. At the same time it is elevating your metabolism post workout for about 38 hours. As long as your nutrition is on target you will lose fat…guaranteed.
Now as for kettlebells being against autism…well all the proceeds from that bridal expo is going to autism research. There are some pretty hefty prizes going around. My small donation of $500 worth of one on one sessions seems like pocket change compared to what the Meadow Wood Manor is offering….$10,000 off of a reception thrown there. That’s practically free…and its a nice place too.
You know as much as I enjoy a one size fits all way of doing things I must admit not everything is appropriate for every person. The Russian Kettlebell is no different. Yes it is true the Russian Kettlebells can be used to accomplish just about any goal you can imagine but as many different goals as there are there are just as many different kinds of people, or at least different kinds of personalities in different types of people.
First let me just get this out in the open. There is nothing magical about a kettlebell. Its just a tool. A powertool in the hands of someone who doesn’t pay attention or doesn’t know what they are doing is bad news. In the hands of an experienced and qualified craftsmen its a much different story. A recent conversation I had with a kettlebell sceptic led me to realize once again how many people are still in the dark when it comes to the methods I use. His question was “How does using a kettlebell make the curl any more effective then using a dumbbell?” Well I could go into the offset center of mass making the top of the curl more difficult but the beauty of kettlebells and particularly the RKC system is that we enforce full body movements instead of bodyparts. When you do full body movements the muscles involved in those movements (which is what they are meant to do) will take care of themselves. Ever look at the biceps of a person in the middle of a heavy deadlift? They aren’t relaxed thats for sure. The kettlebell swing is the same way. A much simpler way of looking at training sessions is to categorize them as pushes and pulls. Full body pushes and pulls cover all the bases…and do it in a much shorter time frame. 20 minute sessions 3 times a week sound good to you? Many of my clients get better results training 1 hour a week then most people do in a gym training 5 hours a week.
So what kinds of things can you expect from kettlebell training with training full body movements as opposed to isolated muscles (isolation is a myth anyways). A more sculpted butt, thighs, hips, and abs with lower body fat. Increased energy levels. Leaner sexier abs. More definition of your shoulders and arms. Increased flexibility particularly in the shoulders and hips. Quick fat loss (This is due to the release of fat burning hormones and high calorie burning. Experience the high rep kettlebell swing and you will see why.) Improve balance and coordination from using your body as a single cohesive unit rather then a collection of body parts. Stronger core muscle to prevent back pain, we do everything from the ground up and swings, cleans and snatches in particular are great for strengthening the upper glute and lower back (a common cause of back pain). Stronger bones and connective tissues to prevent osteoporosis and injuries.
Reduced stress and blood pressure. Honestly this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Now onto my original intent. Is it right for you? Well I don’t know who you are but hear me out. Women looking to drop a few pounds of body fat will find it extremely effective. One of my clients lost a dress size in less then a month (not bad considering she only trained an hour a week total). Martial artists will notice a bit more snap in their punches due to the ballistic strength in the hips from the kettlebell swing. Grapplers will notice a significant increase in power and a grip that won’t get tired. Police Officers will notice that they have the conditioning to chase down a suspect and the strength to hold them down. Men will notice a physique that is sinewy, ripped and powerful with muscle definition in all the right places. Ultimate fitness for regular people.
Now who isn’t it appropriate for? Lazy people. The ones who are content to come to the gym just to kill time. Any road will get you there if you don’t care where there is. People who are content with their fitness probably won’t want to get into this. If you just want to turn on your ipod and read a magazine while going on a treadmill or elliptical at a whopping 5 miles an hour Kettlebell training probably isn’t for you. If you don’t pay attention to what you are doing you should find something else. Kettlebell training requires you to pay attention both for safety and for results.
If you have any questions about Kettlebell Training don’t be afraid to ask me.
Well for me 2009 was a big year. A lot of big things happened for me. It had its extreme highs and its lows. I am a little sketchy on the exact order of things but here is a short list.
Baby announcement. The first announcement we had that one of my cousins who I was very close to growing up and still am, announced that they were pregnant. This was huge news and one that changed all of our lives. We had suspected that she was pregnant (on Christmas she jetted to the bathroom like a bullet) but wouldn’t confirm it until the announcement was sent out via text message the second the ball dropped.
Engagement. My girl and I accompanied my cousin Jesse (who had the baby) and Arnel Ricafranca on a cruise that held seminars on how I can reach out to the world via the internet. My girl thought it was just a work vacation but I had secret plans otherwise. There we met up with Vince Delmonte whom I had met previously but hadn’t really hung out with and Mike Mahon (a strength and conditioning coach who has some evil stuff…including a jump program that has some scary results) whom we continue to be friends with till the present day. While on one of the beaches I asked my girl to go for a walk with me which her being her normal pain in the ass self said “no” until me being my normal pain in the ass self pestered her until she went. There I popped the question and said “By taking this ring you give me permission to annoy you for the rest of our lives.” haha sucker
RKC. In September of 08 a chance meeting with senior RKC Dave “The Irontamer” Whitley inspired me to go through the RKC certification course. It was something I don’t even know why it took me that meeting to get me to want to join up because I had been such a fan of the RKC system already. It just made sense for me to want to join up. In February 09 the training for it came to a peak and I was ready and became an RKC. Amidst the brutality of the course I made a couple new comrade friends. Steve McMinn RKC is someone I still keep in touch with today. I owe him a tribute…he already wrote one for me.
Baby C. Another one of my cousins had a baby in April of 09. Him and his wife are one of those couples that never seems to fight and really truly loves each other. Baby C. coming into the world is just one of those things that makes ya happy. Baby C. is going to be my ring bearer. He already looks like he is ready to walk.
Arnel Ricafranca got hitched. You probably already know who he is since he is somewhat famous online for all of his workout videos on youtube. It was him who taught me how to put mine up which is probably how you found me to begin with. Well him and his fiance got married. My fiance and I were groomsmen and bridesmaids in their wedding. We wish them a happily ever after.
RIP Grandma. This actually happened the same weekend that Arnel got married. I was close with my grandmother and we would drive down to South NJ where they lived and Grandpa would take me on tractor rides and Grandma and I would feed the ducks and squirrels or go fishing in their pond. It was hard seeing her go through all the misery of being in a hospital and for someone being as smart as she was (she would actually finish those newspaper crosswords that are next to impossible) not be able to organize her thoughts. I know she found it extremely frustrating. Being with her in her final moments was hard but I think it made the mourning process easier.
This was just a short list. If I talked about everything this list would be like 10 pages long and I just don’t have the time for it today. Gotta get my drink on at some point
A couple friends got married (seems to be happening a lot). Babies were born. Got new family members. Met family members I had never seen. Hung out with strength legends. Met new people. Set personal records. Accomplished things, failed at others. All in all…not a bad year.
Eric Moss over and out
(whoops I just realized my girl Jenn just wrote a blog post about this year. Same basic stuff but you can read it in her own words –> Jenn’s journey)
