The Summer '09 KBLA update & Fall '09 Workshop Updates

Wow....so much has happened in the past few months. Where do I begin???

Better go with a list format to make sure I hit the points I need to:

1. East Coast Debrief: The East Coast Workshop Tour was AWESOME. Starting with Chris Wright-Martell's Modern Self-Defense Center in Middletown, CT, followed the next day by the inaugural Delaware Kettlebell Workshop in Middletown, DE's St. Andrew's School, and finishing with a special workshop in Hamilton, NJ's Israeli Krav Maga Center, and with a few private consults along the way, the tour was a whirlwind of maximum energy and minimal rest.

Sandy Sommer, RKC of Charm City Kettlebells did a great job organizing the Delaware Kettlebell Workshop, and George Samuelson, CK-FMS followed suit in NJ. Rest well assured that I'll be back to both of those places. In fact, we've already got the dates locked down for next year's Delaware Kettlebell Workshop, so get ready for more of the best comin' your way!

What did we cover? Some of the points we touched on are here in this blog: 3 Prys, Hard Style Lock, Swing Cues, Naked Get-Up, combat applications, etc., etc., as well as a plethora of cues & teaching tools that gave even the most experienced of lifters, athletes, & tactical personnel benefits that they weren't expecting. ;-)

I got to see colleagues I hadn't seen in a while (such as RKC II Rolando Garcia, Sr RKC Will Williams, CK-FMS & RKC II Phil Scarito, RKC Jen Morey, RKC Dr. Don Berry, RKC AJ Oliva, RKC Steph Myers, & RKC II Prof. Steve Freides), while meeting other RKCs I'd never met before, like Anton Iskersky, Deb Vollers, & a bunch of kettlebell instructors from other associations & federations. To say it was a blast is understatement at its most blatant. The hospitality, the respect, the warmth (both socially and climatewise), and the

At every stop along the Tour, I had the opportunity to work with people who are some of my favorite folks to interact with - martial artists & tactical personnel. It warmed my heart to see operators from the NJ State Police & PA State Police, as well as other departments make it out to the Tour stops. Their feedback on how these teaching & training methods directly affect and improve their on-the-job performance means perhaps more to me than anything else, as these are the men & women whose lives are on the line constantly for our safety.

I got to log in several hours teaching Sifu Alex Richter at City Wing Tsun in Midtown Manhattan. Sifu Richter is the USA's representative for Grandmaster Leung Ting's Wing Tsun organization, and he's a perfect example of the "yi wu hui you" (Mandarin - "making friends through martial arts") ideal. He's been working with Rolando Garcia and is going to make an AWESOME RKC someday soon.

David Kahn is another such instructor who's a class act all the way. As Chief Instructor of the US branch of the Israeli Krav Maga Association and with a list of high-profile clientele longer than an Oly bar, he made me feel completely at home while teaching at his facility. I'm pleased to call him a friend, honored to have worked with him, and look forward to seeing him again.


My NJ Workshop Participants - For some reason, the pic's getting truncated. Click on the image to see the full pic and all the participants!

To everyone who participated in the East Coast Tour, I'm deeply grateful for all your feedback, I've noted your requests for future workshops, and I'm hard at work RIGHT NOW on putting together more dates and stops.

I may have to sneak back east for Philadelphia's first ever East Coast RKC certification workshop in early October!

2. Going Down..... Under - Yes, the rumors are true. I'm heading to Australia & New Zealand in October. The dates & city stops are almost finalized, but I need to tie up all the loose ends with the organizers. Rest assured that once things are nailed down, the first place you'll get registration info is RIGHT HERE!

3. Apologies: I need to take a moment to apologize to the folks who were looking forward to the Irvine & Riverside, California workshops that I'd originally scheduled for June & July. After coming back from the East Coast, I did a bit of soul searching and realized that the one person who depends on me most was perhaps seeing me the least.

If you're not sure who that is, look up at the top of the page and watch the slideshow. Most of the pics are of him in some way, shape, or form. So in the interests of being a better Dad and spending time with my beloved son, I asked the organizers to work with me to reschedule those workshops, which we will do at some point in the future. I apologize again for disappointing you & promise that these workshops will be held at a future date.

As Sean Schneiderjean, RKC told me on Facebook, Zig Ziegler is quoted as saying, "Love is spelled T-I-M-E." And that precious lesson is one that I'm going to keep in the forefront of my head & my heart.

4. Hit the Beach with Pavel Tsatsouline! - Speaking of Sean, he's set up a very special workshop with RKC Chief Instructor Pavel Tsastouline in Ventura, CA on the beach! If you've ever wanted to learn directly from Pavel without the pressure of a certification or having to spend multiple days at an event, this one-day event in October is your hot ticket. Sean's even set up a special discount code for those of you who are coming as referrals from KBLA, but it's ending at the end of this month! The official deadline is August 7th, but I wouldn't drag my arse on registering. Even some Sr RKCs (Will Williams & David Whitley) are coming in from the East Coast just to have the chance to work more directly with Pavel himself, so please don't sleep on that. REGISTER NOW before the discount ends and the spots are gone!

5. USMC - 1st ANGLICO: I had the honor of attending the Change of Command Ceremony at the invitation of Lt. Col. Michael Gann, RKC. Heading back to Pendleton brought back memories of a great RKC weekend there, and it was a pleasure to see the Devil Dogs again. Please join me in wishing Lt. Col. Gann and his family nothing but Godspeed as they relocate to the Army War College in PA. The Marines of 1st ANGLICO were damn lucky to have a leader like him. And I've NO doubt that his successor will be Hard Styled soon! We salute you, Sir. OOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

6. Foot Fundamentals: Instead of a monthly workout, I challenge you to do this...
Set your feet about shoulder width apart at a STRICT parallel along the centerline of the foot. Without allowing the balls of your feet to lose contact with the floor or pivot/slide in any way, bend your knees and pry them out until the center of your kneecap is moving in the same vertical plane as your foot. Get 5 reps of that perfectly throughout the day, and use that as your summertime repatterning drill. You may be amazed at how much your feet feel like they're working overtime, but the rest of your lower body will thank you for it. Wanna know more about the science behind that exercise? Get to one of my workshops or classes & find out!

Self-Limiting Exercise: Are you ready, willing, and enabled?

Ever since the CK-FMS workshop of May 09 and hearing the strong endorsement of my mentor, Gray Cook, I've changed my opinion of the Vibram Five Fingers from "interesting" to "must have". How did this come about? Well, let me backtrack a little bit.

Cook's explanations years earlier about how core development patterns can often be thrown off in childhood really struck a chord for me as a new Dad. Newborns evolve through a progression when it comes to developing movement patterns - rolling, sitting, kneeling, crawling, and standing, with reaching included at every step along the way. Those are the same movements we develop in the Turkish Get-Up sequence, and that's something Gray, Master RKC Brett Jones, and I discuss & break down in depth with the Kettlebells from the Ground Up manual & DVD.

However, we as a society have learned to circumvent the natural processes of evolution with technology... and it's not exactly in our best interests!

Case in point - The baby walkers that are so popular right now are actually robbing our babies of crucial core development. A quick search on Target's website just yielded 11 items in the "baby walker" category. It's not like these things aren't selling, and I've seen them in homes of every socioeconomic strata. As Gray has said many times, core development is at its best in the infant & toddler stages.

One of Cook's more humorous quotes is "Want a great core workout? Try moving around with a head to body size ratio like a toddler's. Go strap on a 40 lb motorcycle helmet, crawl around a little, lie down, get up, and walk around. Then tell me how your body feels."

But technology has allowed us to shortcut development, allowing us to develop strength where we may not have an adequate based of functional or fundamental movement. Most children, as they develop, build the strength to stabilize their bodies in the sitting, kneeling, crawling, and then standing positions before they ever go for a walk. The baby walkers artificially suspend children in an upright position, giving them external stability and robbing those core stabilizing muscles of training that these youngsters will need later on in athletics and movement.

We are artificially ENABLING each generation to do movements they are not ready for, and their bodies are paying the price. Want proof? Look at the data as far as what's become acceptable as far as childhood fitness and adult ranges of motion.

Per Gray Cook, authentic movement systems are SELF-LIMITING. In other words, if your baby's not strong enough to walk and stand unassisted, then the lack of strength and coordination are limiting factors. Allowing the child to struggle on their own and develop those attributes gives him/her a chance to bump up against their limits, acknowledge them, and then overcome them. Believe it or not, a growing baby knows what he/she can or can't do, but that doesn't stop them from trying... or trying your patience. ;-)

The same can be said for the equipment we use on our feet.

The multimillion dollar athletic shoe business has evolved by making what should be a self-limiting exercise (e.g., running) and facilitate it past the point where many peoples' intrinsic foot, leg, and hip muscles are ready to maintain solid movement patterns. Over time, we get used to training longer and harder than those muscles are ready for because of the equipment (i.e., shoes) that we consider de rigueur.

So what happens when we switch back to a more "natural" system, such as created when running with the Vibram Five Fingers? We bump up against our limits.

If you're used to running 2 miles a day, the first time you go for a run in your Five Fingers, you might have to drop back to 3/4 of a mile. While I'm not an avid runner by any stretch of the imagination, my first run in the Five Fingers forced me to realize some movement patterns that were grossly amiss with that particular exercise. A 2 mile run, which is not terribly unusual for me, became wickedly uncomfortable shortly after 1/2 mile. My right calf was starting to scream at me, and I realized that I'd been able to run for longer periods because the running shoes I'd worn heretofore had essentially trampolined my every step, catapulting my body forward off the cushiony midsoles.

Instead of training my body for optimum performance, I'd been enabling dysfunctional or weak movement patterns in the guise of exercise. Going back to what is essentially barefoot running has been quite an eye opener as far as posture, body mechanics, and humility.

Instead of muscling through the 2 miler I'd set out for, I walked for the remainder of the mile with very tall posture, paying attention to how my feet were relating to the ground. I'd come up against my limit, I recognized a weakness, and I'm going to take my time pushing the envelope as my body develops the mobility, stability, strength, and coordination to be able to get back to 2 miles in the VFF shoes.

Balancing Instruction with Pushing the Envelope

For the past few months, I've been focusing the Sunday morning KBLA training sessions intensely on form, technique, corrective exercise, mobility, and the soul of the RKC system - the Swing.

Now it's time to continue the circle, back to the format of the original KBLA beach training sessions. Those who are intermediate/advanced will be assisting with teaching in order to prepare you for RKC certification or re-certification, and those who are beginners will be benefitting from your guidance.

The pace of the class will be faster, more intense, and will go back to finishing with a circuit, so make sure you communicate with your partner of choice! I'm going to be joining in with the circuit. Bring beach towels or be ready to get dirty for anything from Brettzels, Armbars, Turkish Get-Ups, or Deck Squats (aka Rear Breakfall to Squat/Stand).

We're gonna DO WORK! Don't think for one second that we're going to sacrifice the quality of instruction that's made KBLA a magnet for people from as far away as Phoenix, Bakersfield, and San Diego. Instead, we're just going to set the standard as far as how we demonstrate having it all by working it all.

For people complaining about not having the body they desire, we're going to set the standard of training. All you have to do is repeat it at least twice more during the week, eat along the lines of either the Warrior Diet or a similar format, and enjoy the results!

KBLA is going to always strive to set the standard in the RKC community. Whether from our strict KBLA-RKC quality control standards, or our "look the part" missive, we're not going to sit back and be content to rest on laurels, ranks, or accolades. Real achievement is constant, not sporadic.

Amnesia of the Gastrocnemius?

The first time I heard Gray Cook talk about a "sleepy calf" muscle, I was intrigued. But as always happens with Gray's presentations, there are a thousand and one things that I go back to study & review. So inevitably, something slips through the cracks.

The sleepy calf comment had to do with a tight hip, something with which I've recently been stuggling with. In spite of being able to drop down cold into a full Van Damme, my right hip is a little tighter than my left, and I can feel it. It irritates me occasionally during sleep, I feel it change my biomechanics when I kick, and for decades now, I always feel like I want to get a serious cavitation ("pop") from my right hip joint.

But I figured, "No, it must be something else for me. My calves are symmetrical. And I do enough footwork with martial arts that it can't be my calf."

So this morning I went for my first run in the Vibram Five Fingers. About 3/4 of a mile into it, I noticed something odd. My right calf & Achilles felt like they were starting to ache. The left side felt NOTHING. So instead of bullheadedly finishing off my run, I changed pace to walk out the rest of the mile, paying close attention to my stride.

With each few steps, I could feel how my right hip was starting to move more freely as my right calf was starting to howl. It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in the coming weeks as I work to make a habit of putting in at least a mile in these Five Fingers every other day. Needless to say, I'll keep you posted. :-)

Off to do a few errands before Courtney's birthday dinner!

Have a great Independence Day weekend, and remember to give thanks to the Vets that you come across. Were it not for each & every one of them, we'd not be enjoying the beer, barbecue, & blessings that make up our lives here in the USA & the rest of the free world.

THANK YOU!

I know... I know...

Yes, I'm well-aware that the blog posts require some updating. There's just been so much going on since I've been back east, and of course since I've arrived back home.

Just been spending the last few days unwinding, enjoying Squealietime, and attempting to catch up on the sea of e-mail that's been accruing since I had such limited Wi-Fi access back east.

Rest assured... The blog and the full debrief on all 3 stops of the East Coast Tour will be updated sometime this week. Thanks for your patience, thanks for your viewership, and thanks for your support.

I have to say once again that I was totally blown away by the depth of interest in what I had to teach, as well as the quality of the people I met and had the honor of working with.

For this week (and hopefully for this entire Summer)... Lots of TGU & pressing, lots of mobility, and lots of high quality martial arts training!

Coach Al Wood on The Delaware Kettlebell Workshop - Debrief #1

This has been such an amazing trip. In so many ways, this has exceeded my expectations, and I've got so much to write about and recap for you. But it's a little late and I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a train to Jersey.

Here's a little glimpse into my Hardstyle Homecoming at my alma mater - St. Andrew's School - as written by the Strength & Conditioning Coach & Associate Athletic Director, Coach Al Wood.

With his permission, his e-mail to me has been reprinted below, and I look forward to the day when he can add the letters RKC to his name.

-----

Dr. Cheng,

First, I would just like to thank you for the outstanding workshop on Sunday! It was a great experience. I also want to thank you on behalf of St. Andrew's for your gracious donation to the school.

Second, I'd like to share with you a few things I took away from the workshop that I'm very excited about:

Before the Delaware workshop, I had seen the youtube video ad for one of your workshops where there was a lot of kettlebell swings being performed. I had tried a mutated version of the kettlebell swing with a dumbbell and considered it a hybrid of a smooth clean and a front raise. When doing my version of the exercise, I felt the primary amount of fatigue in my shoulders, upper traps, t-spine, and unfortunately, lumbar spine. At the time, I thought it might serve a useful application as an introduction to my athletes who had trouble learning an olympic hang clean. You know, power shrug, up on the toes, triple extension but don't lock the knees. I think a lot of RKC's would have vomited had they seen what I was teaching as a kettlebell swing.

Then, after 4 hours of re-educating my body on how to contract certain muscles, on how to relax other muscles, and on how to breath, I picked up a kettlebell and performed 10 reps of proper swings. I immediately noticed how hard my glutes were contracting. There was no effort in my lower back or neck. The fatigue was in a completely different place than I had predicted. While I found this interesting, my "Ah ha" moment didn't happen until the next day.

The morning after the workshop, I awoke with soreness in my glutes. That's not really something new for me. I've had some pretty killer traditional leg workouts. At a bodyweight of 181lbs I've squatted 605lbs x 1 and 405lbs x 22. I use a low bar, powerlifter style squat and go deep. Trust me, I couldn't get those numbers without knowing how to activate my glutes hard and I've had leg workouts that have left me almost crippled for days with soreness. It wasn't that I was sore in my glutes that surprised me, it was where I was sore in my glutes that surprised me.
The upper, outer glute medius was sore and still fatigued (no doubt from prying my knees out all day) and the upper, middle glutes were sore (a place that I've never had sore before.) But before you close this email thinking, "Who is this crazy guy and why is he telling me what parts of his butt are sore?", just bear with me. My "Ah ha" moment came when trying to recreate that sore, flexed feeling in my upper, middle glutes.

It only came when I locked my knees out very, very hard. We discussed during the workshop that there was this long-standing wisdom in weight training of "never lock your knees out". Not only that , but in the exercises that I rely on most to activate my glutes like squats, split squats, glute-ham raises, and RDL's, there really isn't a hard emphasis on the knee lockout. When I squat or split squat heavy, the last 6 inches or so at the top I am decelerating to a stop. I've accidentally locked out too hard at the top of a heay squat and it can make a bar with 405lbs. resemble a bodyblade in the way the plates start to flap up and down.
It's not that I hadn't been taught to lock my knees out during squats, it's just that it felt very unstable and unbalance when I did. To activate my glutes with squats, split squats, and RDL's I'm relying primarily on the deep eccentric stretch at the bottom of the movement and a hard concentric contraction to return from the bottom. 95 percent of the contraction is occuring with my knee in front of my body. The top part of those movement are to "come in for a landing" and rest or
sometimes to give a voluntary squeeze of all the muscles in the legs as an afterthought. Even if you consider the clean to be a great glute activator at the moment of triple extension, the activation is extremely short lived and softened by dropping into the catch of the movement.

This may seem like a long-winded explanation of how I contract my glutes, but it occured to me that in my current program (and the programs that many of my athletes follow) I am leaving a lot of unrecruited gluteal fibers on the table. And not just any fibers, but the ones that are responsible for explosively contracting the glutes while both the hip and knee are in full, hard extension like the left leg of Michael Johnson below:
[Image:michaeljohnson.jpg]
It's not that I've been performing or teaching leg movement exercises incorrectly all of these years, it's that those exercises are simply incapable of producing the same pattern of gluteal contraction as a kettlebell swing. No other exercise powerfully locks the knees and contracts the glutes safely. This is truly amazing to me.

I wanted to write you this email not only to share with you what I took away from your workshop, but to also share with you that I fully believe that the integration of kettlebell training, in particular the kettlebell swing and clean along with the other resistance training and speed development tools that I already use will result in faster, more explosive, and less injured St. Andrew's athletes. That is priceless and I thank you for the donation of your time, experience, and wisdom.

Al Wood ATC, CSCS
Director of Sports Medicine
Athletic Trainer
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Associate Athletic Director
St. Andrew's School

A little martial nostalgia

Today's hangtime with Shotokan karate legend Sensei Tom Muzila, and the subsequent review of some of the Black Belt Magazine instructional videos that were shot over a decade ago, brought back more than a few memories from the days I think of as my first set of "golden" training days - college.

Tom was working as fight coordinator on a movie called The Hunted, with Highlander star Christopher Lambert and The Last Emperor star John Lone. They had some re-shooting to do for some scenes at the end of the movie, and Tom brought me on board to double John Lone as we were roughly the same height, and Tom was familiar with my martial background of Chinese martial arts and some training with our mutual teacher - Master Tsutomu Ohshima.

Close Range Combat Academy Wing Chun headmaster Sifu Randy Williams was staying with me at the time as he was in town shooting his own instructional video series with Unique Publications, then owner of Inside Kung-Fu Magazine. So Sifu Williams & I went to the set, a feudal Japanese castle rebuilt inside a Santa Monica Airport hangar.

Tom had me come in to watch some of the non-fighting reshoots and to get a feel for the project, so I got to the set and sat quietly in the back with Sifu Williams. Not wanting to let Tom down, I was focused on taking in the whole process of filmmaking and the flow of the set when suddenly this tall guy stands RIGHT in front of me, obstructing my field of view. Mind you, back then, I had way more fight in me than diplomacy, so I took a bokken (wooden training sword) in hand and gently nudged the man to the left, out of my field of view. Not even looking up to take my eyes off the scene being filmed.

As soon as the director yelled "CUT!", Sifu Williams and Tom looked at each other in total shock, and I looked up to see the man who immortalized Connor MacLeod standing right in front of me.

I, of course, didn't remember pushing anyone out of the way, as I was so focused on studying the scene, but Sifu Williams and Tom didn't let me live that one down, saying, "You pushed Christopher Lambert out of the way on his own set!!!"

Lambert graciously dismissed my profuse apologies saying, "No. You were doing what you should have been doing, and I was in the way. I'm the one who's sorry to you." And I was completely dumbfounded by the classiness with which he handled my faux pas. During the re-shoot, which took something like a week, Lambert was always kind to me, always unpretentious, and never too busy to mingle. Shooting the fight scenes with him at the end of the movie was a great honor, and I'll look back on that memory with fondness.

OK... flashback & nostalgia time over.... BACK TO WORK!

But in case you're done with work already and too curious to let this one lie...