Our workout life & goals have just undertaken a huge shift.  I’m just now getting my mental-arms wrapped around the changes in store, but the bottom line is that our cash flow picture has changed significantly so we are curtailing expenses where possible.  Among the things on the “discretionary expenses” list that are to meet the budget axe are:

• Weekly Tuesday night training with Luka at Hocevar Performance, and
• My date with the Russian Kettlebell Challenge Certification Workshop in April.

This is a huge shift.  The RKC was my next big goal.  Tuesdays were the highlight of my workout week, my chance to “lift heavy shit” and mold my aging  protoplasm into something that looks halfway decent when naked (no, there will be no pictures).  I was just feeling like I was “turning the corner” on my recovery from the pre-Thanksgiving nerve injury, so now this second dose of adversity forces me to do a complete reboot on the training regime.  Terri is as devastated as I, as she was seeing changes in her body that she has never had in her entire life.  We are determined to get back to the gym as soon as possible, but short of holding a “Send a Calnan to Training” telethon on the public access channel (maybe this is where I should sell those pictures), the timeframe for our return to Prowler-Pushing and Tire-Flipping on Tuesdays is not clear.

The new training regime isn’t established yet, but it’s basically going to be Terri and I training each other 3 or 4 times a week.  I still have 5 weeks of bootcamp training to go, so my Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings are scheduled for the next month.  With the equipment we’ve managed to acquire over the past year, we should be able to devise some pretty good kettlebell complexes, bodyweight sessions, and the occasional heavy lifting on our own (accepting donations of an Olympic Trap Bar, if you’ve got one laying unused in your garage).

With Spring apparently upon us (things are blooming, and the frogs are back!), we may even dust off the bicycles and start putting in some saddle time.  We haven’t led any rides in months, and I owe a friend or two a hilly ride to Black Diamond/Green River Gorge.

The next few months will probably be more of a mental than physical challenge.  We need to stay focused, even when the future gets foggy.

I have signed up for the RKC certification in February.  In addition to it being 3 full days of instruction interspersed with physical exercise, there are two physical tests that one must pass in order to be certified:

Snatch Test: perform 100 snatches of a prescribed weight (for my size/age, it’s 20kg/44 lbs) in 5 minutes, and

Grad Test: In a Tabata interval cadence (20 seconds work/10 seconds rest), go 100 yards alternating the work periods between walking see-saw kettlebell presses (2 x 24kg/55 lb bells) and two-handed 1 kettlebell swings.

Tuesday I decided to use my workout time to attempt the Snatch Test.  I wanted to gauge how far I have to come before the February Cert.  I was a little anxious about what my result would be, but I managed to get in 90 reps in 5 minutes.  Better than I had hoped for, but I imagine that 2 more reps per minute is going to take some work.

I’m still nursing sore lats this morning from Monday’s negative chinups, so I’m going to try to work those in tomorrow.  Maybe VO2 Max work later today to take the chill off.

I hit the negative chin-ups pretty hard to start, but I think I paid for it on the pushups in EDT Set #1.  I may also have a bit of a fatigue hangover from Luka’s “farewell, I’m going to Cabo for a week so I want you to stay sore for 6 days” Saturday workout.

I finished my Business Analysis class series last week, which is a big load off my mind and frees up some evening workout time.  On to my next goal, which is shaping up to be the RKC certification workshop in February.  I know it’s something I want to do, but I’ve been waffling on the decision for the past week or two.  The physical tests involved with this 3 day workshop are pretty arduous, and more than a bit intimidating.  I do have 20 weeks to prepare, so this should be achievable with hard work and a bit of discipline.  I’m going to steal a page from Lee Spencer’s playbook:  Although the biggest event she’s done is a half-ironman, she’s signed up for the full ironman next summer.  Set a goal, commit, and get your ass to work, Calnan.

Certification Requirements

Video of the Grad Workout:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HeAd8PyjtY