I started the week with “light” day of Enter the Kettlebell week 8  on Monday.  This week the pattern for the cleans and presses changes so that you really do have a light day of presses, a medium day and a heavy day.  In ETK terms that equates to 5 ladders of 3 rungs each on the light day, 5 ladders of 4 rungs each on the medium day  and 5 ladders of 5 rungs each on the heavy day.  This pattern remains in place through the end of the Rite of Passage, week 12.

Light day was no problem with the cleans and presses. Chinups were tough.  The conditioning practice on light days includes kettlebell snatches performed at an easy pace: 10 R, 10 L followed by a minute rest.  In this case, the practice lasted 8 minutes.  I’m not sure if grip strength is the problem, or just form in general.  But kettlebell snatches are just painful for my hands.  I’m training with Elise Matthews, RKC-II on Sunday and am psyched about letting her evaluate my form with snatches, among other things.

Tuesday was a variety day and I chose to do a test to see how many swings I could do for a set period of time with as-close-to-perfect form as my body and brain could agree on.  The practice lasted 12 minutes and wasn’t physcially  tough because I was focused on correct form as opposed to a completing a certain number of preselected reps.  When I felt like I was losing form in any way at all, I stopped and rested until I felt ready to go again.  It was an interesting practice, and illuminated the fact that many of my past workouts have gone too far.  The hardworking exercise fanatic in me always wants to push the work load.  I have to focus on taming that beast because form needs to be the priority.

Wednesday was medium day, so the clean and press practice included an extra rung in each of the five ladders. It went fine.  I think I must be getting stronger with the presses.  For the conditioning portion of the practice,  I did kettlebell swings for 8 minutes: 24 swings (which equates to about 45 seconds work for me) followed by 15 seconds active rest.  This part of the workout felt more heavy than medium!

By Thursday I realized that I would be losing a rest day this weekend because I’ll be training with Elise on Sunday.  I am taking rest days very seriously and prefer to err on the side of too many at this point, so eliminating one from the week didn’t feel right.  I considered using Thursday, a planned “variety” day, as a rest day to make up for losing Sunday, but then realized that if I did so, I wouldn’t get much practice with Turkish Get Ups in this week.  That didn’t seem right either, so I did a workout of 15 minutes of slow “naked” (no weight) Turkish Get Ups followed by some (no idea how many) single leg deadlifts.  (Just because I miss deadlifts). I think it was a good compromise.

The need for rest was confirmed when I somehow slept over 9 hours Thursday night.  Because today, Friday, is a planned rest day, I had turned off the alarm clock.  I expected to wake up at my usual time but slept through instead.  I feel really good today, and am excited to tackle my first “heavy” day of cleans and presses tomorrow.   More fun follows on Sunday!  Yay!