Reasons why I feel so good.

During the last 3 years of my life I have made some very sound decisions about my training, diet and lifestyle. Month by month I have continued to feel and perform better than I have in years. My consistent and rigorous yoga practice has healed many old injuries that had plagued me for years. I can’t emphasize how important yoga is for the older athlete. I have tried Tai Chi and Qigong but they pale in comparison to the healing benefits that come from a consistent yoga practice.

It really occurred to me how much progress I made after I attended my 25th high school reunion several weeks ago. Unlike some I enjoy seeing my old classmates and teammates from my glory days. Many commented that I looked no different than I did when I was 20. That struck me and last night my wife and I were looking at some photos over the last 10 years. In a picture from my 20th reunion I was at least 30 pounds overweight. I looked much older 5 years ago than I do now.

The basis of my ongoing health of course is that I stay active. Even when my eating and lifestyle went south I always trained and it makes a difference. You should never give up on training just because your diet sucks. The funny thing about my diet is that I didn’t make any drastic changes. I just stopped eating dessert every night. I had developed a habit where I ate ice cream or cakes every night. White sugar is very addictive and when you establish a habit you almost have to have it every day. I’ve said before that moderation is not something I ever exercised in anything I do so I just had to give it up. Now that it’s out of my system it doesn’t appeal to me at all. Adjustments like this can be profound over time. Changes start occurring right away but it takes awhile to see them.

I don’t talk about supplements much because I think they are over hyped. Nevertheless my supplementation over the last 2 years or so has also made difference in the way I look, metabolize food, sleep and on my energy level. I take fish oil, C, E, B1, magnesium and decent multi vitamin without iron. This regimen came from a nutritionist I saw and was based on several factors including my typical diet. I tinkered with the levels a bit and it seems to work pretty well. I still go back and forth with the coffee but have found that if I take a gram of C after each cup that I handle it more efficiently.

Based on what I saw at my reunion I think one of the biggest factors in staving off the aging process is eliminating the booze and tobacco. Tobacco in any form is a no brainer for most of you reading this blog but booze is a grey area. I have stated before that moderation is not my bag so I gave up the booze completely 18 years ago. I could tell right off which guys had been hitting it heavy over the years and which ones either abstained or drank only sparingly. The regular drinkers looked like they were 70 years old.

The lifestyle changes I have made have also played a big factor if only on my mental health. I lobbied quite vigorously to get an office less than a mile from my home. Where you live commute may not be a factor but in Boston a 5 mile commute can easily turn into an hour each way. That’s 2 hours out of your life each day flushed down the toilet. Traffic stresses me out in a bad way. I have also refused to travel out of state for work. I did this for years and it also takes its toll. What I have lost in money as result of this I have more than made up for in peace of mind and additional time with my family. If you’re half way decent at your job and posses a skill that’s in demand you would be surprised at how much push back your employer will take to keep you happy. I also have 4 children so activities can quickly start taking over the family. We keep it simple. School is number one. We also provide daily time for unsupervised play for our boys. They all play several sports but we don’t go overboard with traveling teams and multiple organized sports at once. This is stupid and is not beneficial to the child. If anything it’s harmful. I generally don’t talk to any parents about sports. If I’m at a practice or a game I volunteer to help. I don’t interact with hyper parents. They’re idiots whose own lives are in complete disarray. They can quickly drain your serenity. Sundays are off limits to any organized activity other than church. Who ever came up with holding youth sport’s games on Sunday obviously hates God and should be strung up from the nearest tree. Maintaining a harmonious and peaceful household is a constant battle in a society that expects every waking to be consumed with meaningless activities and work.

As important as all these other changes have been nothing trumps staying active. I know plenty of guys that work long hours, travel constantly, are over booked with family commitments and rat like shit yet they still manage to squeeze in some gym time I order to stay a step ahead of aging and disease. Hell I even know people with some pretty serious ailments that drag their ass to the gym or yoga studio on a regular basis. Staying active is potent medicine.

OTW has slithered back into obscurity.

Do you here that sound? Listen very carefully now. Yes that’s it. It’s that slimy, slithery sound. That’s the sound of Girevoy sport and its OTW methodology sliding back into obscurity. The run was fun while it lasted even if it was ever so brief.

We here at the Moynihan Institute pride ourselves on the ability to stay on the cusp of all the latest and greatest cutting edge trends in strength and conditioning. We have had a love/hate relationship with the kettlebell and have come to accept the fact that the kettlebell will be with us for some time. The methods of their use however have shifted pretty significantly in the last few months.

As many of you know the kettlebell has been around for some time although it drifted into obscurity for 50 years or so in this country. A Russian that simply goes by the name of Pavel reintroduced them to us less than a decade ago. Kettlebells are now an accepted tool in the arsenal of all worthwhile S&C programs. The Moynihan Institute even has a facility exclusively devoted to kettlebell training. If you’re ever in Boston be sure to stop by our world class Walsh Kettlebell Komplex situated on the southwest quadrant of our .25 acre facility.

We have several different types and weights of kettlebell for you to choose from but most out our collection is from Dragon Door. They still make the best kettlebell on the market today. We do have one competition grade Girevoy bell but that will soon be placed in our archives of antiquity. That’s because kettlebell sport in this country has just entered phase one of crash and burn.

Without getting into all the ugly details I will admit that the schism and eventually break from the original Hardstyle contingent was amusing for a little while. It was even intriguing as reports unfolded of cripples abandoning their wheel chairs and the blind being restored to sight after a few applications of the One True Way method of lifting kettlebells emerged onto the scene. Many thought, “How could we have been lead down the dark road of Turkish Get Ups and bent presses when all along all we needed were timed sets of snatches and clean and jerks?”

Conversions took place en masse to the new religion which we were now being told was the old religion, the true faith right from the origin of the kettlebell. Why Jesus himself would have lifted kettlebells in this fashion had he had access to them. Any one familiar with Russian culture should know by now that there is messianic quality to these people. So much clamoring for the truth but always somehow coming up sort. See the failed experiment of Marxism for evidence. About the only thing these people every got nailed down right has a been rampant alcoholism rate that would make the Irish blush.

Americans of course are willing to overlook just about any short coming when it comes to novelty. And the OTW brought us a novelty act. All your S&C needs could now be met by simply snatching and clean and jerking for time with a 16kg or a 24kg bell. What’s that you say? You want to lose some weight? Try snatching and jerks for time. You want to push that dead lift over the 600 mark? Well why not try snatching and jerks for time. Can’t make it happen in the sack? Have we mentioned snatching and jerks for time? It got to the point where doing anything but snatching and jerks for time with a kettlebell made you a certified asshole and an apostate to boot. But the tide has clearly turned.

In the war between the Hardstyle and OTW methodologies of kettlebell lifting a winner has clearly emerged. That winner my friends and loyal readers is Hardstyle. Yes that’s right the Moynihan Institute now officially endorses Hardstyle as the official kettlebell methodology of the Moynihan Institute. Now we won’t go so far as condemn the use of OTW like we do with Crossfit. OTW is fine if snatching and jerks for time is the sort of thing that melts your butter. We personally find it too pedantic and one dimensional for our taste. It’s quite frankly a boring way to train and will only appeal to a fringe element kind of like those that attend renaissance fairs and Star Trek conventions.

You OTW acolytes will surely take exception to our conclusions but like I said before we tend to be attuned with trends in the world of S&C. This OTW business is going no where in a hurry. We got the inside scoop on the OTW training manual set to hit the presses soon and our worst fears were confirmed. The program is based on snatching and jerks for time. Save you money people. There’s nothing here that you haven’t already seen.

Even the debates have come to screeching halt as Hardstylers quickly and correctly came to the conclusion that their methodology was preeminent from all perspectives that matter. The kettlebell forum over at IGX is as good as done. B-A-D may as well turn in his moderator keys seeing that there has been nothing of significance discussed over there in some time. Meanwhile the Dragon Door forum and her various RKC blogs have been as robust as ever. Hardstyle training is clearly the choice of champions.

Even stalwart bloggers of the OTW are beginning to lose their edge for the fight and are finally coming around to the fact that there’s more to life than snatching and jerks for time. It won’t be long before we’ll hear them saying, “you know I never really abandoned Hardstyle….I was just….blah, blah, blah.” Like I said it was a good run boys but it looks like the party’s over comrades.

Hardstyle!

Crossfit = Injuries

The Moynihan Institute does not endorse Crossfit. Don’t do Crossfit. The potential for injury far outweighs any benefit that you may obtain from this poorly thought out program.

Last week hundreds of police officers through out the North East met up in Salem for a fitness symposium and certification for police officers. It was a solid event but one thing came through loud and clear. Crossfit is not recommended for law enforcement officers. Like we have said here at the Moynihan Institute on many occasions Crossfit is not a viable long term fitness solution.

Those in employed in public safety and in the Armed Forces are often finding out the hard way what Crossfit will eventually do to you. Being injured or unduly fatigued days after a work out is counterproductive to these professional and fitness enthusiasts in general. Being sore after a workout should be a rare event. It’s an indicator that you have traumatized your muscles. High level athletes will experience this more often but these workout are done sparingly and in conjunction with restorative methods up to and including anabolics.

Thrashing your body into submission and regular delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is part and parcel of the bodybuilding template of training. The Moynihan Institute has long believed that Crossfit has been primarily concerned with obtaining a certain look. Participants with the look are often trotted out as shining examples of what Crossfit can achieve. Of course with the right mix of anabolics and genetics this look is possible with just about any protocol. Performance can hardly be the primary objective since Crossfitters are neither very strong nor are they particularly fast. A look at today’s WOD of back squats is a testimony to poor performance from a strength perspective. The fact that Crossfitters are generally on the weak side of the strength spectrum has become common knowledge.

Over the last few years all Crossfit had to hang their hat on was their aesthetic. Their prototype was that of the athletic looking bodybuilder. Despite all the bluster from their illustrious “couch “ about elite athleticism they have yet to produce any concrete evidence of an elite level athlete that wasn’t elite and retired from that status long before they ever discovered Crossfit. If couch wasn’t such a douche you might be inclined to feel sorry for the bastard. I said might.

Crossfit brings me back to my boxing days. The Crossfitter is like the guy in the gym that talks the most shit and looks pretty damm impressive while shadow boxing and skipping rope. Put him in the ring and things change pretty drastically for the worse. The guy is all show and no go. That’s Crossfit in a nut shell, a program for posers. If couch stopped blathering on about how superior his program was and quit trying to disparage real trainers who have obtained real results with real antitheses in real sports then we might not be so hard on Crossfit. But he won’t do this and neither will his lemmings. Fortunately for us we all know the fate of the lemming don’t we?

Most of us in the know have known that Crossfit is clearly inferior from a strength and conditioning standpoint. Now it’s common knowledge even among casual trainers. What’s worse for Crossfit is that the name is now almost automatically associated with injuries. This is what killed off Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise program or whatever it was. The last 12 or so trainers I have met have immediately give me a knee jerk response of “it causes injury” when the topic of Crossfit comes up. The word is also spreading fast among law enforcement and military that Crossfit is contrary to their objectives. It was good run while it lasted and I’m sure a steady stream of douche bags will keep drinking the Kool Aid and paying for the certs. If there’s one thing this world doesn’t lack its douche bags and douche bags loves them some Crossfit.

The mother of all sell outs is about to begin.

Well the Mother of All Bailouts is slated to take place today. It will happen. This will go down in history as the Mother of all Sellouts, the greatest fleecing of the American taxpayer since the savings and loan shake down. This is being pitched as a “necessary evil” and in the words of Nancy Pelosi, "We sent a message to Wall Street: The party is over." Are you laughing or crying?

Let me get this straight. Congress handed Wall Street the biggest welfare payment ever and this is a message that the party is over? I’ll have to remember that one when my next house payment is due. It seems to me that the party has just begun. In a way the likes of Pelosi are getting precisely what they have always wanted, phase one of the government controlled economy. Wall Street money changers are once again getting what they have always had, the best of both worlds. If you jump a guy and roll him for $50 you’re looking at 5 to 10 in the joint. If you multiply that by several million, blow the money but not before giving you and all your pals bonuses, then you get reimbursed. This is how Congress “sends a message” to Wall Street. I wish they send me a “message” like that. Unfortunately all I get is the bill for the message that the party is over. Shit I didn’t even get an invite to the party.

The Genesis of this mess all occurred when lending institutions started handing out questionable and high risk loans like some people give out Halloween candy. I have been highly criticized for my thesis that this all started because left wing organizations like ACORN had hard on for getting Negroes and illegal aliens into homes that they neither deserved nor could afford. I got the usual counter arguments of what about this and what about that bullshit. Look, it’s a complex issue but I still contend that one the biggest reason we are in this mess to begin with is because congress mandated institution like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get more “people of color” into homes. During the last real estate boom minorities (read black and browns) were not “reaping the benefits” of this wave.

One distinction between a liberal and conservative is that liberals are tied to the concept of equality and conservatives are tied to the concept of liberty. Those with liberal tendencies tend to see all gaps in wealth and achievement as issues of equality. So blacks and browns have low rates of home ownership because they are somehow being short changed. Institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created and federally funded precisely because of these perceived inequalities in the housing market. A conservative would more likely chalk these differences up to issues of liberty. People that own homes do so because of decisions they have made in their lives with regards to education, work and saving.

When the boom was in high gear I was working in government on housing related and taxation issues. I am quite familiar with left wing organizations like ACORN and the role they played in our current crises. ACORN lobbies hard in Washington and as a result they were thrown some significant bones. Loans were being given to unqualified candidates by unscrupulous lenders. Ironically when the borrowers could no longer meet their obligations groups like ACORN were caterwauling the loudest even though they were the ones that facilitated these adjustable mortgages. Things like welfare payments, slip and fall settlement checks and disability claims were now being accepted as “income”. Traditional concepts of credit worthiness were all but abandoned in order to get blacks and browns into homes. This was necessary to reach their goal.

Many have taken me to task because of my race angle. Naturally I’m being accused of being a racist. This is the lowest form a retaliatory reaction when trying to discuss matters of racial politics in a frank fashion. You will be inundated with the greedy banker angle till kingdom come and there is no question that this came into play in a significant way. I see no point in rehashing that. In order to really grasp why this happened and possibly prevent it from happening again we need to understand the Genesis of this problem.

The problem is ACORN and its subsidiaries. As an organization ACORN is hostile to democracy, capitalism, free markets and meritocracy. Their implicit belief is that minorities are incapable of home ownership because the cards are stacked against them in the free market. They just can’t cut it in whitey’s world. Sure they serve poor whites as well but they are not their bread and butter constituents since poor whites are politically unpredictable. I have personally brought whites to the local ACORN branch in Boston and was met with a cool reception and an admonishment to fill out reams of paperwork. ACORN was established primarily to get homes for blacks. Since this blatant racist agenda would never fly with collecting public monies they had had to use the catchall phrase of “low to moderate income” folks. No one on any front cares about low to moderate income folks. That designation alone will not guarantee a voting bloc. Blacks however will and many low to moderate income folks are indeed black.

ACORN lobbied hard with her Democratic constituents in Washington and received underwriting from Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae does not provide loans. They simply find lenders that will make loans. It should come as no surprise that most legitimate and established banks and lenders were not interested in making risky loans. Since the Great Depression banks have been loath to make loans if they felt they might have to repossess. Foreclosing on houses is very bad PR for a bank despite conspiracy theories about a Jewish cabal of bankers rubbing their hands together in anticipation of snatching homes away from destitute gentiles.

In place of these reputable lenders came your fly by night outfits with their adjustable rates, no money down and interest only loans. It turns that the old adage was true. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. So when the market softened those interest rates that the borrowers could barely afford quickly became rates beyond their means. As a rule when it comes between eating and paying the mortgage eating usually wins out and this recent situation was no different. Couple this with the fact that this was demographic with a history of poor financial decisions, sketchy work history and utter lack of notion of thrift and savings and you have a compounded situation.

This situation was a set up for failure for the borrowers. The lenders didn’t give a shit since they were getting their juice up front and then selling the loan down the road. Even legitimate loans favor the lender in a big way and make Mob juice men seem like real sweethearts when you add up how paltry the principle is during the first 5-10 years of the loan. It’s a real shakedown. Besides all these lenders were protected by private mortgage insurance (PMI). Yeah that’s right all borrowers are required to pay the PMI for the lender if they put down less than 20% and virtually all these low income buyers put next to nothing down on these homes. The PMI is other ingenuous set up to make sure that the lender always comes out ahead. In this arrangement you pay the insurance on the lenders loan. You can’t ask for a better shylock set up. The problem is that the PMI outfits couldn’t keep up with the defaults so the lender didn’t get paid and that meant the Wall Street “risk takers” who bought these sketchy loans up got screwed. They of course never get screwed.

Here’s how Wall Street dealt with this. They took a gamble, made short term gains but got screwed in the end…well…sort of. Their solution, after they all got bonuses and stuff, was to threaten Washington by saying that they would no longer loan money at reasonable rates to legitimate borrowers unless the taxpayers picked up the tab for their loss. So where I work our loan rate went from 6% to 7% overnight. When borrowing millions this is significant. We have been sold a bill of goods that the American economy will revert to feudalism if we don’t pay the ransom money now but I don’t buy it. Sure we might take a hit in the short run but this is America. Some outfit will see the opportunity to make money and start loaning at 6.75% as opposed to 7%. This is how capitalism works. What ever happened to the market correcting itself? Are these Fortune 500 types the only show in town? I say fuck them. Let them earn their own money back instead of fleecing every American family to the tune of $10,000. ACORN has to go since they started this whole mess to begin with. They can hold a bake sale or something to raise revenue in the future but no more tax dollars for them. As for the poor sap that defaulted on the loan I say caveat emptor. It ain’t my fault you can’t do simple math. You are no longer my fucking problem. This shit has to end smowhwere.

When is it no longer my fucking problem?

I was sitting in Mass last Sunday listening to this priest drone on about helping the poor. The social Gospel - I get it. Here was this guy that went from the comfort of his middle class home, into the comfort of the seminary and then onto the comfort of parish life. His needs have always been met. He has never experienced scratching out a living, hustling or cutting corners to get by. Like many educated middle class white people he assumes that all others that look like him shared the same gilded upbringing. The fact is that most people haven’t experienced this Leave it to Beaver sort of existence. Most of us took some knocks just to put together a decent existence. And for this it seems all we get asked is to give more and more.

I want to know one thing. At what point is it no longer my fucking problem? Is there some point where I’m off the hook? If I write a check for $5,000 am I done? I look at my check every two weeks and gasp at the deductions. And let’s not forget about the yearly tribute to the IRS. It never seems to end. Someone always seems to have their hand out with some hard luck story. At what point is it no longer my fucking problem?

I was back in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio last week for my 25th class reunion. It was a great event and it was fun to talk old times. Being in Cleveland was apropos with all this $700 billion bailout talk as a result financial institutions giving out bad loans to the underclass. Cleveland is a textbook example of what happens when you give home loans to a class of people that are fiscally irresponsible and not deserving of a home loan. Furthermore Cleveland is also a text book example of rampant dependency of social welfare programs. If you want to know how we made out on LBJ's War on Poverty go to Cleveland. Poverty won..

It’s not for lack of trying that poverty won out. The intentions were good but the notion that you can give a layabout a check for nothing and expect him to run out and get a job in short order is simply delusional. We have been proving this on a daily basis since about 1965. These are more misguided middle class assumptions like I hear every Sunday from Fr. Social Justice. If we just help out poor DeShawn to get back on his feet again he will surely find himself a job and start providing for those 16 bastards he has fathered in his 20 years of pathetic existence. Excuse me while I sarcastically snort.

I was standing on the street that I grew up on and I counted about 40 houses with for sale signs, most of which were abandoned and boarded up. In the 20 years that I grew up on that street I don’t ever remember more than 2 housed being for sale at once and none where ever abandoned. Shit, if a cigarette butt was dropped some old DP would be out there cleaning up. The street was a mix of people of Irish and various Eastern European extractions. Everyone was blue collar. No one was rich and most came from a dirt poor existence.

The neighbors to the right of us emigrated from Lithuania shortly after WWII. In Lithuania they were considered intellectuals. Stalin’s thugs killed everyone they knew. They escaped to Brazil and then eventually came to America where they became factory workers. They never picked the language very well and stuck with their own kind but they were good neighbors. She’s still alive and alone on that street. Now she’s surrounded by a different kind of thug that has zero appreciation for what she endured. Her house has been broken into several times. She’s afraid but does not want to move into a nursing home and she cannot sell her house in this market. She’s 94 years old.

The sad part of it is that this was a good neighborhood up until about the mid 90’s. It was around this time that lending institutions were being coerced or willing participating in high risk loans targeted at poor minorities and when we say minorities here it does not included Asians. Really in Cleveland when we say minorities we are talking about blacks of Southern extraction that initially came here for the industrial work but stayed for the generous welfare benefits. This is not a high achieving demographic and despite the white middle class penchant for living in denial of these sorts of realities, these people are losers in the game of life. No one in their right mind wants to live within shot gun distance of these jokers and the proliferation of exclusive all white suburban developments is a testimony to this. You can castigate me a racist but look around in your own neighborhood before you start judging me.

In case you haven’t figure it out yet I’m opposed to bailing out these lending institutions and the people who defaulted on their loans. They fucked up and should no longer be in business. The government needs to wake up and realize that this was simply another failed social welfare experiment. You won’t hear much on this angle. Its poor form to point out the obvious irresponsibility of minorities and /or the poor these days. It’s much easier and softer to chalk it up to bad loans on the part of Wall Street. While this is true it fails to take into account that outfits like Fannie Mae were obligated to consider welfare payments and disability checks as “income” by law. They were also encouraged to discard “outdate indicators” of credit worthiness like having a fucking job and paying your bills. Jobs…bills…how passé!

So now once again guys like me are being asked to foot the bill. There goes my economic incentive check that was my fucking money to begin with. I can’t wait to see how they bust my balls next time want to refinance or buy a new home. “Hey whitey weren’t you a day late paying that electric bill in 1988? No loan for you!” Yet a guy who wears shower cap as a fashion accessory gets a no money down loan based on his food stamp allotment. This nation is fucked and has been for some time now. If you think it’s bad now you just wait and see what happens when that light skinned, Whole Foods shopping mook gets into the White House. On the bright side I can solace in the fact that in another 30 or 40 years or so it will all be over for me. Maybe then it will no longer be my fucking problem.

Confessions of a kettlebell addict.

Have you ever had something in your life that you vow to quit but you keep coming back to it? I smoked years back and one day while still a broke undergrad I threw a pack of cigarettes out the car window in disgust. That was it. I was never smoking again. Later that night I was walking up and down that stretch of road desperately searching for that pack of Luckies. I have had similar and far more disgusting and dramatic episodes with my on again off again relationship with the booze. Thankfully I have long since ditched both of those habits.

I have had a similar relationship with the kettlebell. Who would have thought that a cast iron ball with a handle could cause so much consternation in my life? The introduction of the kettlebell was the demarcation line in my training career. Everything is defined as either BK or AK. If people inquire about kettlebells I urges them to move along, forget about them, just stick with whatever it is that you are doing. In the long run you’ll be happier that you never started because when you cross that invisible line there is no turning back. It’s like the first time I ever did LSD. I never saw the world in the same light after this.

I blame me wife really. She bought my 24kg Dragon Door bell for my 40th birthday. I don’t know how she got the notion but she must have known I was dancing around the idea of using kettlebells for some time. Part of me thought the concept was gay and entirely overblown but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by all the glowing testimonials of the cast iron ball with a handle. Prior to this gift I was perfectly happy lifting heavy barbells and dumbbells. I had no need for Soviet gimmicks and tomfoolery.

I didn’t even use the bell the first 3 months I had it. It just sat in garage next to some wobble boards and some other useless gadgets that I had accumulated over the years. Then one day I thought, “Well I’ll just lift if a few times just to see how it feels.” I did some Turkish get ups and swings. No big deal. It felt fine. Before you knew it I was hooked on the simplicity of the kettlebell. I kept it in my trunk and would sneak out at lunch time for a few sets. In no time I was progressing quite nicely with the Enter the Kettlebell program. It was fine.

Shortly after this I turned a corner. I started discussing, debating and arguing over excruciating minutia pertaining to kettlebells. That’s where I made my mistake. Training is an action activity not something you quibble about incessantly on internet forums. This ruined it for me and started a never ending cycle of swearing off bells, switching to other styles and essentially just spinning out over nothing.

Yoga gave me some perspective on my training and a much needed break from lifting things in general. It healed me in many ways. It made me hate the kettlebell with a passion. Just recently I went away for awhile. I had no computer access or access to a Bikram’s studio or even a gym. Something made pack my 24kg in my trunk just like in the old days but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t even use it. But I did. Almost every day I did something with the bell. I wasn’t too concerned about reps of sets or some sort of protocol. I just brought it to the park and lifted it. I followed the spirit of the original Russian Kettlebell Challenge . I listened to my body. Whatever I felt like doing that day is what I did and whenever it felt right to stop I did. It felt great and in spite of not doing any yoga for nearly 2 weeks I stayed surprisingly limber. My past 2 sessions in the Bikram’s studio felt really strong. I think I have struck an interesting mix between strength and flexibility.

My inclination is that 3 days of Bikram’s and 3 days of RKC is the ticket but I going to be more receptive to what the body is telling me than was the schedule dictates. Whether it’s lifting or yoga I will be pushing right to my edge and then pulling back. No more crossing the threshold and collapsing in a puddle of sweat. My dividends from this tactic have proven to be meager over the last few years. I guess my needs have changed. So it’s back to the bells and the yoga. I will continue to update here but will not engage anyone is debates online about my training. I will either contribute to conversations of I will keep my mouth shut in other venues. I’m tired of all the hate and bitterness. This time I have really turned over a new leave.

E-mail me at:moyihaninstitute@yahoo.com