BodyBlitz Fitness Solutions

The word “foundation”  have many meaning to many people, though many the end result is somewhat the same.

It entails some form of  low level support for building something else . Take for example foundations for a wall is the steel bars(re-bar) that are inside to hold the concrete, and it is as strong as how many bars are there to reinforce the wall.

The foundations of physical fitness is no different from a building; gravity affects us all and no matter how many ways you cut it, its going to lead back to same thing.

I won’t go as far as to speak about athletic community and specific sports because as of now, I have not specialized in any sport as of yet but I train the general population more. So I have a better understanding on the average Joe or Jane on the street, whom for some apparent random reason wanted to get fit.

First of all, I don’t try to make up my own rules and views on the definition of fitness. I try to fit the definitions within conventions if its reasonable and for more obvious reasons, that its just common sense.

I view physical fitness as the ability to do a physical activity well – short, sweet and most of all simple. I don’t want to use big words which makes no sense at all, things like broad time and modal domains whatever…

So what is physical activity for an average office worker like? – wait that was a rhetoric joke, because it almost nothing.

Clicking on the mouse and staring at the screen 10 – 15 hours a day, and another 2- 3 sitting front of the computer/television screen before finally hopping into bed. Maybe, just maybe once in a while,  your boss dumps you a huge stacks of file or some pretty chick/handsome dude needed help with carrying some stuff, and you’ll volunteer.

Doing nothing at all, won’t cause problems right? I mean you did nothing but sit on your ass all day, what problem can there be?

Well quite a bit, depending how bad it is. The best part is that when the idea of getting fit suddenly pops into their little sedentary minds, the first thing they do is engage in some vigorous form of sports or put on a trainers and start jogging 2-3 km then start to think they can do a marathon already…

Don’t get me wrong, I believe something is always better than nothing but when most sedentary slugs do this, they’re actually trying to build the top of the building without laying the foundations, building the ground floor or the floors underneath the roof.

No one with common sense will try to build a peak without a foundation; a roof without anything to support it, stuff don’t just float in the air. Yet, this is whoever who have no clue where to start does. Maybe not so common sense after all.

I know alot of people will say, “Don’t be a wuss…just do it!”

Which is fine if you’re 15 to maybe mid 20 but when you get older, things that you damaged while doing physical activity don’t heal as fast and you need to work to pay bills or your mortgage.

Before someone quotes me out of context, and “over” comprehend my point and start putting words into my mouth -

• All I’m saying is that, unless you get paid while injuring yourself, then fine go ahead and stop reading.
• If you can run your life with a sprained ankle or a bad knee, more power you!
• If being in pain all the time with injuries is your fetish, then what can i say?

If you don’t have such  luxuries, fetish or method to work around it then read on…

The foundations of fitness is laid with bricks of strength -

As  I said before – you’re up against gravity; your friend, nemsis and alibi all rolled into one.

Gravity is the one thing that makes the difference of a 150kg (mostly fat) vs a 50kg man landing from a jump. I don’t have to expand the magnitude of a “Richter scale experience” by the 150kg man on his ankles, knees and joints.

He could even kill a person if he landed on the right spot.

If your joints/muscles are not strong enough to take such abuse, it is impossible to hold up a structure (your body) with ample support.

Getting stronger is the first priority to cardiovascular conditioning, because seriously… how far do you need to run everyday from your MRT station to your office? Or bus stop to home/flat?

I’m not saying that cardio is useless but in terms of priority, conditioning would depend on the kind of physical activity needed for your everyday life. Doing simple metabolic conditioning in terms of body weight circuits and supersets is ample for a beginners as long as its low impact and moderate intensity.

But a full on 5km run or a hard interval training all the time isn’t the solution in the beginning. Getting stronger is, and if you get stronger everything else will improve together with it.

Strength is the key element to anybody’s fitness, without it you’re just fighting a losing battle with gravity.

When in doubt, do less -

There is a saying – “what doesn’t kill, makes you stronger.”

That is almost true on most parts but what doesn’t kill you also may cripple you. What cripples you make you crippled, period. Unless you plan to compete in the para-olympics, then ignore what I wrote and stop reading.

Laying the foundations of your fitness need not be a competition to fuel your ego, just because you can do 10 doesn’t mean you have to do 100 to prove your worth.

Although I am a firm believer that practice makes perfect and practice is at least 25 reps or so as a minimum however it must be with good form and done with quality movement.

If you’re killing yourself by forcing repetitions and doing bad ones, do less of it because you’re doing yourself a disservice by teaching yourself the wrong things. Also if you’re not doing it properly and with too much volume of work/load, you’re going to injure yourself.

Less sometimes is more, exercise is like a drug; ample dosage provides a cure, too much and you’ll over dose on it.

Always train with movements and not muscles -

I’m not going to go as far as to say that muscles are not important, because they simply are.

But going to a gym and then doing only bicep curls isn’t  going to improve your life and fitness level a whole lot. We don’t use the bicep a whole lot in everyday life.

There are different planes in space that we move our bodies – front and back/ up and down / left and right.

As a newbie,  your biceps or chest muscles should be the least of your worries. It is like tweaking the rims of a car when the problem is the chassis and the axial that rotate the wheels if you catch my drift.

Sure you can argue that the rims are equally important but you need not worry about that now, that can come later when your foundations are strong.

So aim for full body compound movements – Squats/Deadlift/ Chin ups / Shoulder presses/ Bench presses / Rows – Oh quick question – Does the chin up have a bicep curl within the movement?

These are the basic and most fundamental movements everything else spans from this and are variations, if you can’t master this then all the “functional” exercise in the world won’t save your life.

Most of it is too exaggerated and reeks of B.S, seriously…what is so functional about moving your mouse around the desk? But thats what you do for a living…

And for your information, doing squats and deadlift don’t injure you… doing it wrong does.

Trust me, I’ve seen many who do and they think they’re doing it right…

Summing up -

These are just a few points to take into consideration.

Lets face it, everyone was a newbie even myself, everyone had to start somewhere. However opinions differ as to what you should do when you’re starting out and it is no different with mine.

The only thing I’d like to point out is that if you have to listen to someone, make sure it makes sense to you and not kill yourself doing things that are stupid.

The simple rule of thumb to follow -

• If it hurts, stop doing it.
• If it doesn’t progress you nearer to your goal, assess what went wrong.
• Do not let yourself get sucked in; everything works(if its sound), just that some things work better for you
• Don’t get injured but don’t stop yourself from progressing with unfounded fears.
• If you want to be cheap then you progress slow. If you want more efficient training, hire someone who knows what he’s doing. (everyone needs a coach)

So there folks, my view on how to lay the foundation of fitness.

I’ve almost completed reading Dan John’s Book and I have this crazy idea of just trying to study his techniques and evolve it to modern times and adapting it to my situation.

I am going to start my Dan Johnology cult and begin paying him pilgrimage by studying the text of this book as scriptures and it’ll be a full fledge theology of this lifting life of a sage.

If you want to call me a Dan John fanboy, so be it…doesn’t matter to me anyway because I’m quite proud to admit that I appreciate his work.

Why?

Because it works and its simple yet easy to understand but far from easy to do.

I think it is a great guide to draw inspiration from and I can do it simply by doing what he says and off load my responsibility to him – sounds like me shrieking responsibility I know but who cares anyway?

I’ve started my “Plus one and” programming and focused on getting stronger, so far the progress is slowly improving.

Currently I’m doing 80kg front squat for 5 and 85kg for 3.  I’ve brought my total back squat volume up to 100kg for 3.

Broke my PR of my military press of 65kg and felt that I could maybe push it to 67.5kg, abit above .75 of my BW.

I count the last set of 5/6 to determine my total best.

So folks, if you want to get something done… just do it everyday, you’d get better at it. No need for fancy smancy programming.

I’ve been also upping my weight on the accessories – Core – Roll out with a barbell/ Decline half get ups with 2 x 15kg plates and Back extension of 4 x 5 reps of BW +20kg

All in all the accessories hurt like hell because I’m so weak at it but when I do get stronger at it, my lifts improve slightly. I fear accessories more than the main lift itself – so it shows how weak I am.

Since I’ve increased my lifting days to 3 times a week, I’m rotating my accessories to hit all the parts -

Flexion – Extension is the main theme – Which means isolations are being used -

• reverse hamstring curls/leg extensions
• Half get ups/Back extensions
• Curls/skull crushers

The rest of the other movements will be hit with the normal push pull configuration anyway so I don’ bother to waste time with it.

I need to however shed the stupid idea that isolations are for bodybuilders, because it’s not.

I find that isolations are the icing on the cake that makes everything click together, doesn’t do alot but when you’re at this stage where you’re trying to push through a plateau, anything helps.

Though maybe I’m just weak, but well I won’t know till I’ve tried.

Recently I got off the diet and was thinking to myself how I weak I’ve become, with my gymnastic research/met con days.

Basically I got sick of the iron, took a sabbatical and came back with new ideas, but the truth was frankly I got bored of doing the same thing over and over again.

Taking a side step once in a while helped me realize a few things that I took for granted.

Being weak sucks, having too many goals at once sucks even more.

Again I’m going to make reference to Dan John’s book, because to me it is something  like a religious class study textbook. Each time I read 2-3 articles/chapters and just stare out into space to reflect on my life and lifting life.

Maybe I have no social life which could factor into the equation but anyhoo…

I was quite intrigue with the idea of the “One Lift a Day” Program; Take 1 lift and go to the gym, lift it for 45 mins with ample intensity/poundage and go home.

See, simple right?

So I thought about it and I felt there was some obstacle and pet peeves that could turn me off from this program… I realize I hate spending 7 days in the gym and rather spend that time in my bed relaxing to music or reading a book.

Call me lazy but thats how I roll, because I can’t justify being heterosexual or not being a pedophile and having almost zero hot ladies working out and watching a bunch of teenager and sweaty men work out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to lift but I hate to hang out at gyms because especially community ones like Singapore Sport Council gym’s are just a play ground for idiots who go there to pass time.

But I digress; simply put, I have a problem with stupid, I try to avoid it as much as possible.

One thing stuck with me for a long time ever since I read that article as a neophyte in lifting on T-nation was “If its important, do it everyday. If it isn’t then don’t do it all.”

Motivated and somewhat fedup with complexity because I don’t even understand it myself, I started a “Plus one and” Program.

My goals were simple, lift 3 days a week, do an important lift plus one other exercise and an accessory.

Rep scheme was a simple 5 x 5 reps, 5 x 3 reps alternating each week just to shake things up and fuel my adrenaline for lifting heavy stuff so I don’t feel like I’m a weakling, and also people don’t steal my weights when I’m going heavy or bother to ask me because they get intimidated when they see me the next time round.. I kid.

So my weakness is in my squats, strangely enough I could do 2 times bodyweight for deadlift but can’t get anywhere remotely near that for squats- I’m peeve and somewhat curious why.

So I do Squats plus 1 upper body movement and core/arms.

A real simple template which I use now is this -

Monday – Back squats + Military press & Weighted sit ups

Wednesday – Front Squats + Cable Rows & Weighted back extensions

Friday – Overhead Squats + Bench press & some curls/skull crusher

Principles are really simple – keep adding weight and go as heavy as I can while  lifting with proper form and never lift to failure – I have no friends in the gym you see, and I don’t want to kill myself.

Having feel of how much you can realistically lift is very important, don’t go just by numbers but always try to push for progress. If for whatever reason, you can’t do or complete the last set of 5, finish it off at 3 and strive to make it 4. If you can’t get to a certain weight like you use to, then forget it, try it another time. I could go on and on but what I’m just trying to say save your ego for another day.

Another thing to note is how fast you recover is how much volume is optimal, what you want to strive for is frequency not PRs in every lifts. If you can’t recover within the next schedule gym session, scale down your workout or increase your rest days. Don’t be stupid and again save your ego for another day.

So its that simple, take one important lift and do it all the time, add on the secondary lift from the other half of the body and add your accessory lift in at the end.

I had a dream, the dream of owning a top notch facility with all the equipments that you see in the modern ones in the US. All the cool contraptions and device for testing, the amount of free space in their warehouse gym. It is just a sight to behold.

However I was jaded that I could never have the chance to play with the weights like how the people across the globe did, my dream became less optimistic.

The only time where I found it decent was when I was working in the now defunct Optimum Performance gym. But reality has made it such that  Singapore Sports Council was okay, but the freedom that is lacking there is seriously a drag to work with. The only other place which I thought was great was at woodlands, at Republic Polytechnic. Dumb bells going up to 50kg, bumper plates with a spin bar, a great platform to train with and lots of space without much crowd.

The main draw for me was that it had a Kaiser Functional Trainer, which is driven by air pumps. The  other best place to be lifting in a old skool manner would be Singapore Weightlifting Federation which has quite decent equipment and a whole lot lesser rules. All in all there are great places but non of them are really accessible to me due to my location and work schedule.

Home gyms are great and are also a seriously affordable investment but the problem is the lack of space and living in a HDB doesn’t really cut it to do such things. However reality is such, there is no perfect environment to train in and basically you have to make do with what you got. I was dealt this lesson when I left a gym to work for myself, condominium gyms were quite badly equipped and most of the things I’ve learned using barbells and proper dumbbells all went out of the window.

Sometimes all I had to work was with this, and seriously I was stumped. I would stare at it with bewilderment as I sometimes have no clue what to do. So one day, I decided that I just needed to go back to the basics. No cutting edge equipment, as ghetto as it can be and to make do whatever I can with whatever I could find.

I surfed the web for many Ideas on bodyweight training, there were a few but nothing really convincing. Then I chanced upon Ross Enamait’s Never Gymless which was a great resource to work with and draw inspiration upon. My further understanding of bodyweight work was with Coach Sommer’s Building a Gymnastic Body, it was all good resources to rely upon.

I went on to purchase my gymnastic rings and to me was the most sensible investment as a training tool so far. It packs up quite compactly, its not too bulky to lug everywhere and for $80 bucks shipped… I can’t find any tool other than the jump rope to match it’s return of investment.

Anyway my transition to a more basic and minimalist approach got me thinking about my training philosophies, and I can’t help but to realize that I’ve became an equipment/fitness atheist. This sudden enlightenment was further enhanced with clarity from reading two articles by Bill Starr and Dan John.

Everything works, some better than others in some aspects of training but not everything is a perfect tool. Buying a power drill to hammer a nail isn’t the best of choices. Yet some people are extremely dogmatic with their approach, believing that is a one size fit all program or a one tool fit all thing.

Fitting square pegs into round holes is just plain ignorance and yet there are many people who doing that.

So my dreams were smashed and reality was a killjoy. However it didn’t stop me from discovering new things, allowing me to be more versatile that ever. The take home point is this, reality is a bitch, suck it up and get with the program.

You can train anywhere, with anything and with anyone. It may not be optimal but you can make it work with enough dedication and creativity. And in the words of the wise Dan John, “don’t get suck it.”

This week I was reading my new book which I bought, Dan John’s – Never Let Go, and it got me thinking how simple yet extremely effective Dan’s words of wisdoms are.

I thought back on how I was when I was younger and clueless, which has been the case many times before as I drift into the “ME” zone when I take long bus rides reflecting on the day’s events.

When I was younger, I made up my lack of knowledge with tons of information. Doesn’t make sense right? Well it does, well kind of, allow me to explain.

I used to be extremely fascinated with everything about strength and conditioning, everything with regards to nutritions and the body’s inner workings.

All the big words that you can’t even string sentence with, all the complex nature of metabolic pathways and kerb cycles, ATP-CP etc. I would dig through such stuff like a teenager whom first discovered porn for the first time.

I was really curious and with my fascination, became my obsession with regards to learning everything I could.

However with all those jargons and big words, I seriously had no clue what it really meant and how it really worked for someone in their life. I mean I could possibly write a thesis on a subject, do the research, do the fact finding and yet couldn’t take whatever I’ve done to benefit a person’s life.

It is like explaining how a lock is made, the mechanism of using a key to open a lock yet can’t explain to someone to use the correct key for the correct lock and telling them to easily turn the knob and opening the door to get into their own house.

You see I knew a lot of things, I knew a lot of information but none of them were working knowledge to a lay person to take home and use it.

I finally realize I was doing it all wrong and that I was not a Phd student but the man on the ground making the changes knowing how and why to apply them.

I was the engineer in the trenches, not the man in the lab coat trying to make advances to science. I stop reinventing the wheel that day upon my revelation and enlightenment and started focusing on applying my knowledge.

And seriously its not that complicated, its not rocket science at all.

Here are some truism that is so simple that you’d can’t get any more simpler -

• Fat loss – eat less (calories) move more (expand more calories)
• Building muscles – Add weight to the bar (strength), food to the plate (more calories and adequate protein) and workout frequent enough (enough stimulus) or just take drugs.

You see the underlining principles is very easy to understand, most people will and can get it when you tell them the first time round. Such simplicity is more beneficial to the layman than all the scientific wanking you throw at them.

So if you want to get someone to get results, do it simpler and make it concise. Get them to understand the fundamentals first before giving them a lecture on the kerb cycle and how de novo lipogenesis and acylation stimulating protein affects fat loss.

Chances are all they hear is …blah blah blah..fat loss..blah blah blah…exercise.

You get the picture.

I’ve been thinking alot of my dieting and bulking experience, though I was obsessed with dieting more as losing fat to me was a personal goal. The thing is, I’ve found that you don’t have to lose control with your cycle and phases and eating habits drastically. The conventional or maybe traditional understanding of bulk/cutting cycles is a cycle of feast and famine – You eat a hell lot and then your eat a hell less.

I found it to be extremely counter productive and wasting alot of time in that aspect because each process can be streamlined to be more efficient. I’ve conditioned myself to eat very little but extremely caloric dense food during my dieting which saved me alot of time and money as the foods I got was cheap and easily available – double cheese burger.

My protein intake has been quite constant at 1-1.5g/lb which works out to be around 150-200 grams daily, not exactly very hard to hit if you knew which food works for you. And so far I’m eating at most 3 meals a day on days which I’m really active and 2 huge meals on normal days with a filler of liquid calories – milk because its cheap and good also.

The problem I have with conventional way of bulking and cutting is that the switch and transition is extremely painful because you need to get use to eating a lot of food then suddenly cut your intake by almost half. It sucks to be hungry all the time and it sucks even more when you’re force feeding yourself food just to get the caloric level up. The bigger problem is that with extended period of surplus calories, you’d gain more fat than lean body mass. On the flip side, it is faster to do it this way as your body has all it needs to build new tissue but the biggest problem I see is that you’ll take longer to diet down and thats where the problem starts. I’ve looked into this and Layne Norton’s plan for mini cuts and bulks and found it very practical to apply to everyday folks.

So say you’re caloric requirements is 2500k/day and you need a surplus. Using your baseline diet for dieting down, in my case which was 2000 calories -

2 double cheese burgers – 860 calories/50g protein

1 Liter of HL White milk – 500 calories/50g protein

150g chicken breast – 248 calories/46.5g protein

7 eggs with yolk – 310 calories/25.2g proteins

Total – 1918 calories/ 171.7g protein.

With this in mind all you need to add 20% more calories from your daily requirements – which is 500(2500 requirement) and the grand total is 3000 calories. So thats a total of almost 1000 calories to play around with to snack of nuts, fruits through out the day without even having to stuff yourself silly to add in the extra calories.

The best part is that you don’t have to keep eating and eating, almonds are one of the best way to add extra calories in. For 150 grams of almonds, you’d get 867 calories and its just 3-4 hand full of nuts(add more if you need more) which can be easily consumed over the day during your bulking period of over 6 weeks.

When you finally decided you need to routinely trim fat, just stop eating the almonds and you’re in a deficit already as oppose to the “see-food” diet where you stuff yourself silly, this approach is more sensible for working adults who have no time to sleep let alone keep eating all the time. Of course almonds is an example, you’re use whatever you find that is low on volume and high in calories to fill that void.

I’ve been experimenting with programming for a very long time, each time it gets even simpler from before.

I call it the reductionist method, finding the core few pet exercise that works and piecing it together. Taking out what is non-essential to deliver a core program which will work for everyone alike; I thank Dan John for it.

In the past, I was heavily up the functional alley – Doing everything supposedly “functional” and the latest trend and this lead to many problems. Programming took too long and most of it were just fluff seriously, to a point that looking at it any logical person would have cut it down and made it simpler.

But we all learn we all grow we all seek new knowledge to understand, I was young and naive but now I’m older but not wiser.

That said I’d like to review my training methodology and philosophy so that I can review it again in the future and face palm myself to see how dumb I am now, bear with me. Also note that they is programmed with the target audience of the general population in mind. I highly doubt that this would suit a elite level athlete in any way, I forsee even higher specialization but until then I don’t know.

Fundamental problem with most people and their movement is that they’re weak, plain and simple. The lack of familiarity with the movement in itself causes people to not understand how to do certain lifts or movement. Take for example, Squatting – Everyone knows how to do it but lost the ability when they stopped doing it.

All trainee’s will go through the same flow of the programming laid out be it bulking up or fat loss or general fitness.

Like wise, they lost the motor patterns to do a simple squat hence losing the strength to do it via stabilizing themselves. That said, Strength is building in my opinion is the fundamental element that everyone needs without a doubt.

Initial phase of my official jurisdiction to programming  is that a trainee’s own body weight and mechanics must be mastered first above all, no external loading until they’ve some degree of competence. Technique will be instilled and remembered if it means getting them to squat for 1 whole hour 2 whole weeks, arresting faults and getting them to utilize the proper form is corrective exercise by itself while they may think its a workout already.

Due to the unfamiliarity to this basic movements, newbies are not “imbalanced” in their muscle length etc – its more like they’re not familiar with using their whole body. Sad but true, often they lack the mind muscles connection really.

Teaching good technique and nurturing some form of competence while working out the kinks like flexibility and mobility issues, general physical preparedness to build work capacity must be taken into consideration.  This is why the body weight is used first, this is largely due to safety than convenience. No body can injure themselves doing Air squats and Burpees unless they slip and fall unlike  loaded front squat and deadlifts.

Generally a simple circuit consisting of 1 lower body, 1 upper body and 1 metabolic conditioning exercise will be used for beginners -

e.g

3 rounds of

100 Jump Rope

30 Air squats

20 chin ups

Metabolic conditioning will be jump rope for beginners, because it is relatively lesser impact compared to running plus it teaches the trainee to learn how to keep their body rigid like plank and co-ordination.

Phase 2 will be adding the strength portion into the work out – I’m inspired by Coach Rutford’s Max Effort Black box training template and have adopted it into my philosophy.

Adding one strength movement and playing around tapering upwards within the rep scheme of 5 5 5 3 3 or 3 3 3 1 1.

The goal here is to get the trainee stronger while still building the work capacity and I believe this will work very well to build a well rounded individuals that will excel in other specialize program for their goals.

Of course the emphasis will be more towards strength as it is in my opinion the primer to all movement and physical fitness; Strength is harder to build and plateau faster compared to conditioning due to the fact that people have limited recovery ability.

So moving on to the specialization phase – phase 3

If mass gain is the goal then I’d referece Lyle Mcdonald’s General Bulk Routine and further specialize into his specialization cycles.

If strength is concern then I’d concentrate on doing the Bill Starr’s 5 x 5 as a primer (unlike what its touted to be, its actually a more intermediate program) to other specialization programming such as Sheiko , Smolov or Jim Wendler 5/3/1

If fat loss is the concern, I’d more on towards more aerobic based conditioning.

End of the day the path way of beginners are for them to get stronger and fitter while getting better at their lifts and their form, because I like a well rounded trainee which address most of their needs and can feel and see improvement in their lives right off the bat.

I too like trainings to be in a cycles; reuse, reduce, recycle -

After hitting plateaus in gains towards their progress and goals, I’d roster them back to phase 2 to recover and tweak their techniques in their lifts. Everyone can move better, even if they thought they knew what they were doing before.

That way working them back into Phase 3 when they’re ready would allow them to re-patterned and draw more insight which I believe will lead to gains for the better.

Its extremely interesting how things change with your interest to learn something.

I was in the past, interested in Olympic lifts and how to do the clean and jerks and snatch in my training. I’ve pursued that with some intent and have learned the basics of it though not perfect or flawless technique but decent enough to maneuver the bar around.

Now I’ve been bitten by the Gymnastic bug and am extremely interested to learn to use my body to defy gravity. I find that bodyweight exercises and the use of one body is underestimated in that sense, that you can do so many things with it yet don’t.

Currently I’m learning to do a freestanding handstand – Its challenging and extremely rewarding to learn a skill like this as it blows my mind on how some people do it with ease.

I find it extremely beneficial to master one’s bodyweight and movement well and it’ll translate to strength and conditioning in a way that has been neglected in most programs for the general population.

The best part about doing gymnastic is that you can do it almost anywhere as there are many venues in the neighbourhood to practice your skills – Children’s play ground has a soft tactile surface to break your fall if you’re afraid of hurting yourself, large open fields with grass patches too can be found almost anywhere and lastly there is the void-deck and common corridor/stair well with adequate space for you to practice.

You can even do it at home if there is enough space to practice.

Though you might think that that bodyweight is light and don’t make you strong – think again because learning a simple handstand is so hard to do. Whats harder is actually controlling your body to allow you to use your body to do movements that most people can only use their imagination.

I’ve always been impressed with gymnastics and how they can actually control their body so elegantly. Initially I knew some moves were insanely hard to do but most I thought was fairly doable.

At first I thought that since i could do a push up and weighted chin ups, how hard can a few gymnastic movement going to be?

I was wrong, so wrong that my ego was smashed by a pair of rings. Ever since then my focus and obsession has been gymnastics and learning how to control my own body weight was something I desperately needed to do.

First order was muscles up, it was a fascination that turn into reps after reps of ring dips and chin ups. I’m proud to say after 1 month of grinding, yes literally – triceps peppered with trigger points and elbow joint hurting, I finally got to do 1 but it was wasn’t enough.

Today I was on a roll, doing 5!

Hard work has paid off, and perfect practice and progression has aided me to do it!

The next move was doing a handstand and initially I always had this nasty fear of falling over and face planting myself on the floor.

I got over that fear and started with static holds, now with much practice the skill has been transferred and I’m proud that I can do one handstand push up with a decent depth.

There is nothing you can’t do with dedication and practice, never give up and always try for it. You’ll get it somehow…

Back from KL and now level 1 certified, the experience has been great and I got more than I paid for in my opinion.

I’m going to do a objective review for would be kettlebell fans who`d wished to learn more about the course -

My stats -

Age – 24

Height – 1.76m

Weight – 83.9kg

Background In the Iron game -

Have been lifting weights for more that 5 years of which 4 years was with free weights, played and lifted with kettlebells for over a 1.5 years. Done and still learning how to do perform olympic lifting for over a year and ongoing training using Crossfit methods.

On top of that, been coaching and training people as a full time job.

So I’ve chalked up a reasonable experience for learning a kettlebell and have a good base of strength with no major movement dysfunction.

What we did during the course -

Day 1

1. Qi Gong
2. Dynamic Warm Up drills
3. Joint Mobility drills
4. Technical overview of the different types of kettlebell
5. Swings  – Double hand swings, 1 hand swings and alternate hand swings
6. Cleans – learning how to rack the bell and how to manipulate the bell to not slap your hand
7. Kettlebell Presses
8. Kettlebell Push press
9. Q and A

Day 2.

1. Qi Gong
2. Dynamic Warm up Drills
3. Joint Mobility Drills
4. Kettlebell Jerks
5. Kettlebell Snatches
6. Kettlebell Front Squat – Learning the squat movement first and drills to correct it, 1 handed front squat
7. Kettlebell Overhead Squat
8. Assessment
9. Q and A

I won’t go so much as to what we learned as it’ll take a entire essay just to write about it, but i’ll highlight the details and things that I think is important to note about the course.

Steve coaching method is clear and concise without much fanfare of trying to show off what he can or cannot do. He gets into the course and into the thick of things to get you up to speed, most of the drills are hands on without much lectures and it didn’t waste alot of time.

Learning is through hands on experience with timed sets and drills and warm up sets where he will correct you and you can ask question regarding your technique with some quick corrections.

Steve has been an awesome teacher as he will do the timed sets with you and you can see the technique being performed at a master level and learn while doing it too and try to mimic it and try to understand how its being done.

Things that I think people going for the course should note -

If you haven’t lifted a kettlebell, then you should pick up one and start learning to do the simple things such as a what the swing/cleans and over head elements. This will give you a better understanding of using the kettlebell and also that you won’t be having a hard time trying to pick up the cues and you’ll be able to get 101% out of the course.

The load of the bell shouldn’t be too much for you to pick up or perform a decent technique and you should be able to understand how it feels to move with a kettlebell.

Bring lots of athletic tape with you as the bells are not smooth most of the time, everyone’s hands was ripped up and the grip causes you more problems than the lift itself.

It can be a teaching guide to let you learn the technique – baptism by fire but it’ll hamper your progress with practice with the timed set.

What I learned from the course -

There are many controversies with lifting the kettlebell and how it should be lifted.

Steve has gone more with the fluid style and using efficiency and technique as the base and biasness of using the kettlebell. I agree with him on this based upon the fact that this course is purely meant for lifting kettlebells only.

However I’m not biased towards any equipment as being superior and everything has its own purpose and every purpose has its time to be used. Using it and believing that it is the only way to train is like fitting square pegs into round holes.

I do not think that using Kettlebell only will be effective as it has its limitation ; for strength/power it is too light and the increment jumps are too large, for endurance it cannot be a substitute for running and working that path way of conditioning, but it can be an effective tool when used appropiately according with your goals.

I went into this course without a pre-construed mindset of what I wanted to learn and accepted what was taught, though I don’t really agree with some drills the majority of the course was blast for me to learn how to lift the bell with my entire body.

And at the beginning it was more than I could asked for, the feeling of understanding and productive use of time and the satisfaction that came with it is priceless. The course fees though expensive in terms of dollars and cents is well worth the money spent.

If you are interested in becoming a IKFF CKT certified and have questions about doing it in Malaysia or the course itself, feel free to email me and I’ll do my best to answer your queries.