Slow One Hour Walk

For now I'm practicing Kettlebell Simple and Sinister every other day. So, on the days I'm not practicing kettlebells I am going to take a longish walk. I've not been doing such walks as of late, just lots of short walks every hour from 0700 to 2100.

Today I set out for a 2 mile walk. I thought I would finish in about 40-45 minutes. It took me an hour. My cardiovascular conditioning was not the limiting factor, but rather my hip and back. After about 35-40 minutes of my walk, my speed fell off precipitously as I had to pause often to stretch my hips and back.

I think I'll limit myself to 40 minutes maximum walking time for a while and see how my hip and back do. It was challenging to get home today. It might be better to just go out for 10 minutes and back 10 minutes, twice so I'm not too far from home if my hip and back give me trouble. I'll try that on Tuesday. BTW, I did my walk in a fasted state.

Morning Kettlebell Practice

I didn't train yesterday. I only got 5.5 hours of sleep so I wasn't ready to train. I also had decided to
fast yesterday, and I made it about 18 or 19 hours. Nice intermittent fast. Last night I got over 8 hours of sleep after a good dinner. I woke up ready to go today. It was cool this morning but decidedly higher humidity.













Original Strength Reset

• Cross Crawl - 20 per side 
• Crocodile Breathing - 2 minutes
• Head Nods - 20 reps
• Rolling - 4 reps left and right first leading w/ arms then legs
• Rocking - 40 reps
• Crawling - 3 minutes

Simple and Sinister

• Two Hand Kettlebell Swings  8 x 10 x 53 lbs
• Turkish Get Ups L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R x 1 x 53 lbs

Did the normal warm up. Felt good. Only took 13:38. Nice sweat going. Moved on to the kettlebell practice. Only did 8 sets today. Stayed with the 24kg (53 lb) kettlebell. Didn't do anything extra. Needed to get cleaned up and into work for a 1000 meeting. Kettlebell practice took 17 minutes per plan. I forgot to take off my shirt but I did train barefoot. I still have not gotten my goal number of steps since Thursday July 27th. Hopefully I'll get them in today.

Back Home Simple and Sinister

Took yesterday off from my kettlebell practice. We cleaned the beach house, packed the Toyota Sequoia and drove home from Isle of Palms, SC to Greenville, SC. Once we got home we of course had to unpack the SUV. I walked as much as I could at rest stops and during the above mentioned process but only got in 6244 steps.

Did my morning mobility (did it yesterday, too) but took a long time to get outside and get to my training. The weather is really nice. The humidity is only 35% here at home versus 64% at IoP. Yesterday it was 76% humidity on IoP! The temperature is only 83°F! That's crazy comfortable conditions for July 30th! But despite the nice weather I still made a sweat angel after I finished my practice session. As usual I trained barefoot and shirtless.

Original Strength Reset

• Cross Crawl - 20 per side 
• Crocodile Breathing - 2 minutes
• Head Nods - 20 reps
• Rolling - 4 reps left and right first leading w/ arms then legs
• Rocking - 40 reps
• Crawling - 3 minutes

Simple and Sinister

• Two Hand Kettlebell Swings  10 x 10 x 53 lbs
• Turkish Get Ups L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R x 1 x 53 lbs

Normal warm up. Nothing special to say, except my left hip and glute felt a little achy. Maybe the glute medius? Not sure. Need to get myself an anatomy book. Total warm up time was 13:01.

After six straight and solid sessions using the 44 lb kettlebell at the beach in much hotter and more humid conditions I felt like going up to the 53 lb (24 kg) bell today. I put the  44 lb (20 kg) bell in easy reach in case I needed to use a lighter weight. But I didn't need it.

I cranked out my 10 sets of 10 swings. The first couple of reps of the swings took me a little by surprise as the weight was a little more than I expected. Felt heavier but it made me focus and every rep thereafter was solid. Felt good once I was done.

I was a little more uncertain about using the 53 for the getups. I was a little wobbly in the beginning but got more solid as the reps went on. I did take 11 minutes to get them done rather than the allotted 10 minutes. Felt great, nice challenge. I know I'm getting stronger. total kettlebell time 22:02.

BTW, I haven't eaten since dinner yesterday. I weighed 245 before we left on vacation last Saturday, today I weighed in at 250.4. That's the wrong direction and far outside of where I should be by my plan. At this point I should be between 229 and 240.59. If I was right on target I would be at 234.79. So, I'm nearly 10 pounds over what my maximum weight should be at this point, and about 15 pounds over my target. 

I'm not going to beat myself up though, because I'm still 12 pounds down from the beginning of the year. I do need to get serious about my nutrition. So, I'm gonna see if I can kick this week off w/ a 72 hour fast. After that I need to keep my carbs low and limit consumption of calorie laden beverages like beer and alcohol. Back on track I will be!

Daily Muscle Top Off

One of the principle of Simple and Sinister is to do a "daily top off" of the muscles. The daily training builds resilience in the muscles. Adhering to the daily, or near daily, training schedule makes your muscles almost soreness proof. The program doesn't require max efforts but you'll also get stronger.

Warmed up with an Original Strength Reset

• Cross Crawl - 20 per side 
• Crocodile Breathing - 2 minutes
• Head Nods - 20 reps
• Rolling - 4 reps left and right first leading w/ arms then legs
• Rocking - 20 reps
• Crawling - 3 minutes

Supersets of Australian Pull Ups and Push Ups 2 x 6, 5

Simple and Sinister

• Two Hand Kettlebell Swings 8 x 10 x 44 lbs
• Turkish Get Ups L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R x 1 x 44 lbs

Finisher

• Farmer's Walk with 2 44 lb Kettlebells

The warm up was good. Took my time with all the resets. Tried to really stretch my hips when rolling. Once I was done with the original strength part I did two supersets of Aussie pull ups and push ups. I increased the reps in the 2nd set from 4 to 5 as compared to last time I did these. Total time 17:25.

Once again I did 80% of the sets for S&S. My left hip was a little sore this morning when I started the swings. But by about the 4th set or so I was fine. I was a little wobbly on the 2nd left handed get up. But the rest seemed solid. The swings were EMOM. I took a little longer than the allotted 10 minutes to do the get ups. Finished S&S in 17:30. 

Having learned my lesson on trying to do the Waiter-Front Rack-Suitcase walks after the extra shoulder work of the Aussie pull ups and push ups, I skipped that series of carries today. After about a 2.5 minute rest from S&S, I just did down and back of the farmer walk, rested a minute and repeated. Kettlebell work done in 23:32.

I actually got in over 10K steps yesterday! I also completed a 24 hour fast.