The Warrior Diet

After you get in the Warrior Diet groove, you will find that pressing, pulling, flipping, banging, smashing, kipping, snatching, jerrking, and all movements not mentioned is a pleasant add to your day. Let me go OFF on this tangent I just spawned in my headspace, and you shall understand. . .If strength is a skill, and should be approached as so, and sets of drills we know are satisfactory can be applied all day every day with nothing but positive gains to report, then why is not food as fuel approached from the same angle? Oh wait, yeah it is. Some guy who I recognized as an author for Penthouse Magazine wrote a book that did not exactly wow Oprah, but helped me lose 20kg of nasty adipose in 16 weeks To the DAY [at a lean body mass of 105kgs that is not that hard]. It is called The Warrior Diet, and it makes more sense than a set of arithmetic flash cards. 1+6=pood. Graze + GTG= lean and daggone MEAN!

Since moving to CA and adopting an attitude that has seriously corrected bad eating behavior, and using the warrior diet as HOMEBASE, and training in doses of 3 or 5 moments of strength [shout out to Kevin and Russell Jodrey of Redwood Kettlebell Club and A. Diluglio of PUNCH, all of which are RKC, all of which are about the multiple minutes of strength during the day] each day, I have kept musculoskeletal aches at bay and developed a mutated degree of freshness with my Session Based Energy. Whenever I tap that keg, and the bells are moving or the calisthenics train is hummin', I am good to go minus a single thought to what my glycemic load is. Now, did I answer the question regarding Your energy levels? Maybe. But I showed you a model that runs parallel between two of the most important avenues in our human lifetimes- chow and training. We do not eat and exercise, we take a chow time and author moments of strength. We eat a handful of grapes and drink a glass of milk. When we see a 'bell we press it. You go to business lunch with other gerbils and they order buffalo wings and beer. You order 3 boiled eggs and have a good morning stretch in the loo. They eat, you fuel. They burn calories, you burn the fat off your soul. Of this brotherhood of iron, this merry band of jolly tamers, we are united. For he who sheds a minute to press, and uses his palm as a measure of chow requirements, is my brother. [sisters too! I love girls who lift]

So follow the warrior diet and grease the groove with every move.

Memorial

When someone asks if the RKC Code is backed by true humanity, or if it is just an esoterically encrypted disclaimer, send them this post.

From Dr. Mark Cheng, RKC Team Leader, to Mark Toomey RKC TL [Reno, Nevada] and myself.

Brethren RKC TLs ---

I'd like to thank the both of you for the service you put in for our country as Leathernecks. You've both been in my thoughts of gratitude all day. Were it not for you and those like you, I'd likely not have had the chance to spend the afternoon earlier with my son in the park without having to carry a gun or speaking Pashtun.

Gratefully,

Your favorite Chinaman
Dr. Mark Cheng, L.Ac., Ph.D., RKC Team Leader

Director / Sifu - Chung-Hua Institute

Chief Instructor - KettlebellsLosAngeles.com

From Toomey, to the doc

My Brother,

Thank you for your kind words. The real thanks belong to the brave men like LCpl Pierce [his son] and Will, both of them are my inspiration to make the second half of my life something I will be proud to have my new family remember me by.
Mark D. Toomey
toomm@att.net

So when you think about what kind of people you may meet when you train with RKC, and who is going to have your safety and success in their hands when you certify, know ye that these are the emn you will be entrusted to.

And to all a good night,
W2

View your event listing here. . .

OUT. Oscar Uniform Tango. As in 'I'm out', 'we out', and 'you out?'
Oscar Uniform Tango, phonetic spellings for the first letter of each word, o-u-t.

I'm about to press out, as I have been keeping a 24kg kettlebell in my room, and it has gathered no moss, shall we say?

So RKC weekends always reenergize the soul, right? Ye who have been, most, yet I would hope all, know the sensations that follow. It may best be described as an afterglow. You roll off that transpo [hotel shuttle, cab, rental car] on T3 [training day three of three] up into the hotel and BANG. It sits in. You just walked into that hotel room an RKC. If you have a roomie and they are full of stoke too, you may just have the makings of a jolly good night in St. Paul. Or Kobenhaven, or San Jose, or LA this summer for the very first time. When you get back to your real life, and that first red light or space out comes and you hearken back to what, like 5 days ago? Just rippin' pumped that you made it through the course, and the team vibe was so high by that last day that you all felt like a straight freight train comin'. I imagine what it had been like had I been more active on the forum before I was cert'd. The first time I had unlimited access to the WWW was in summer 2003, and then only for about 8 months. When I bummed laptop time off of a fellow RKC in 04-05, I was waaay into it. Attended the convention, the one and only convention, in LV that year and then began a nice relationship with this community. If you are reading this and you can't even picture yourself an RKC Instructor Candidate, I urge you to pay close attention to the rivers and tributaries nonetheless. . .

So with that off my nest I will tell you that there is another blog out there congealing in the cyber-ness. You may have sniffed it over on the Food Network. Hard Style has delicacies also, you rascals. . .

Clear a path

Just before the rain today, which only lasted a warm minute anyway, I sneaked in a set of
Get Ups 20kg x 1LR 24kg x 1RL 32kg x 1RL
Swings 20kg x 5/5 24kg x 5/5 32kg x 5/5

It began to spittle so I grabbed a shower and sat down to grind out some work. I have to compose some text to promote the workshop Craig James Sjostrom RKC and I will be conducting at the Sports Mall near Salt lake City Utah. I already peddled to the post office, saw a really fit comrade who works at the same Trader Joe's, and yesterday I hiked 16.6 miles through the canyons in and around Topanga. I could see the sea. I ate a grapefruit atop the ridge and killed some serious chow at an upscale Ralph's grocery on Ventura and Hayvenhurst before I trekked the final 5 miles home.. Avocado and cucumber roll, a big Greek Salad, and two, TWO Starbucks Iced Coffees. venti. With half and half. Caught the midnight showing of Indy and crashed from 0300-1100. No hourly wage today from either profession. Just type pad action, and enjoying this cloudy kinda rainy kinda grey day where the Cure drones from the iPod and the cure for fear is in the 1 pood. Today I have not had any caffeine, and feel that the habit I have made of drinking hot water with lemon can ultimately break me of my Starbucks trips. I am addicted to the trip as well as the product {I should just buy a coffee machine. I get a discount on excellent coffee from the store, and I am loathe to spend nearly 40 a month at Starbucks. . .OK, that's it, I am on it}. . . So with that I bid you good evening as I am into the thinkin' box again. . .


Whiskey Two out

Whey of the yama

Fueling: Reveille 0930
2 cups hot water spiked with 1 fresh squeezed lemon
Joint Mobility, Starbucks Triple Espresso, 16oz ice water
[Session]
1300 post workout
2 scoops Met-rx Vanilla whey
240ml Organic Whole Milk
8 Blackberries
Shake and yum.

At work, 1800 Hours
3 mejool dates
1 date rolled in coconut
Massive bag of baby spinach with 3oz EVOO, 40z Parmesan cheese, garlic powder

It is Midnight and I would love to crash out, but I have to make another deposit. I am feeling a serving of grapes liquidity and a dicing of baby bok choi. . .

When I passed through Philly, people were shocked that I had shed pounds in what seemed like a very short time. Folks from the RKC hadn't seen the hard but squishy placed 285 I toted around just before and after the New year. I put on that weight after getting to 265 lean, successfully, and then shifted my focus to aerobic bullshit like running and LONG bouts of jump rope. I attempted to re-enlist in the USMC on active duty and was stonewalled by regulations regarding tattoos and BMI. When I aborted the attempt, I rested my bones from training for the final month in PA and went ape on 6 packs of Sierra Nevada and Italian Hoagies. EC Where you at? So when I got to CA, I was ready to shed pounds. After my 29th celebration of me exiting my mother, I took it upon myself to no longer voluntarily support the cattle or poultry industries, as a measure of civic responsibility borne from personal desires to be listed hereafter.
To lose a significant enough measure of body weight, including muscle if the case declares, as well as fat, to where my joints are not threatened by the load they support.
To set a goal for myself, and achieve an outcome that grants personal satisfaction as well as contributing energy into something greater than I, and scratching the itch for 'the team atmosphere' I so badly need.
Also, to step from one change to the next and function with the gears motivated by responsibility, and orientated towards my goals. E.g. giving up carbonated beverages, and on to bigger things like the protection of the animals I've lived off of for a time. But in all honesty, I do subscribe to the theory that man sits atop the food chain, and can be omnivorous, I merely do not trust the White Man who sits atop a pile of carcasses beating a war drum and killing with impunity. Soapbox break.

I have to get this weight off so I can live long and not be a busted up 270lb. 38 year old. I, for the longest time, encouraged by the opinions of professionals and friends alike, thought I was a tall, endomorphic guy with mesomorphic tendencies. Meaning I can put on fat and muscle to my frame's desire. Who knows if that triage of body types has merit, but since I have leaned out to below 245 in the last 18 weeks, the argument that I may have grown up, under radically different circumstances, to be a tall skinny guy, stands it's ground.

If my folks hadn't raised us on highly processed EVERYTHING [they knew no better, I harbor no grudge], and my teen years were not spent hoovering sugar and playing music and drawing comic books, I may have been a 200 lb. 6'3. Think about it. All of my dad's brothers are over 6'2, and they all had a Tim Duncan type build. My brother, who is 5 years younger, and weighs 155 lbs at 5'11 [weird] is cut up like Tyler Durden, and sustains his frame with dollar store cola and frozen _________. So if I had ran track, or played lacrosse from my earliest age, not at age 15 to be on a team and make my sweetheart respond, I really no sh*t could have been a tall svelte comrade. Then again, it was my need to physically metamorphizoided that linked me to a USMC recruiter's office at age 18. . .

Down the road I would like to be a leaner cut of myself in nearly every way. If I can hack bad behavior out of my eating mechanisms and my brain housing group, the solitary thing I will allow to expand will be my scope, my vision, my soul. I must be the change I want to see in this world. And we're already facing the same direction. Step it out.

1140 to Sam's Town

Left of noon. The last few nights have seen me hitting the rack hard and sleeping way later than i would hope. Tomorrow is Wednesday, and that is a designated hike day. It is nice and cool today, which makes the appetite for the hills a bit harder to curb, yet I know if I swing 300 kettlebells today, chase them with :30 of Hot Potato or hand favoring push ups, I will not look back in anger.

Heard 'em Say
20kg 1 arm x 100 [5 sets of 10/10 RL]
24kg DARC x 100 [4 sets of 25]
32kg Two Paws x 50 [1 set of 50]

10 sets, 8 of which were backed by sets of 5 Hard Style Edge Gripping Hand Favoring Lattisimus Dependent Push Ups

It is 1130 and I'm going for it. . .
And it's 1207 PM and I got it

Addendum: I am about to leave to work a shift at my happy place, and wanted to share with you a format and Link sent to me by friend and colleague David Whitely, SR RKC.

Want a sample of the Russian Lion Power Course? Here you go:

Exercise 1: Barbell Clean and Press 3sets of 5 reps
Exercise 2: Barbell Deadlift 3 sets of 5 reps
Circuit: pushup x10, walking lunge x20, pullupx 10. Repeat the circuit twice.

No fancy equipment, no complicated routines, just intelligent training with fundamentals that guarantees success!

That link again is: http://www.undergroundstrengthcoach.com/index.cfm?affID=irontamer

Dave
Iron Tamer Fitness

The Alma Mater

1120 Hours, Monday 19 May 2008

Push Ups, holding onto the edge of the pool, to favor my bum left hand, 5 sets of 5 exploring grip, tension, lat involvement, and breathing.
Bodyweight lunge, tactical, non-alternating, working on hip recruitment all the way through, feeling my bum left ankle in the deck, and using my toes as I would any ohter digit. Primal presence in 5 sets of 5 reps.

20kg C&P x 5 RL
Press 24KG x 5 RL
Jumped in the pool, steamed some baby bok choi and tofu, and I'm all good. Trader Joe's 1500-2300 tonight.

The Flyers will return next season young and hungry, do not fret. In the meantime, Go Pens. It's all about PA.

And I'm out
W2

The Hard Style diaries continue

Sherman Oaks Park, SFV, California. 0830 Saturday 17 May.
All Levels Kettlebell Class, 3 in attendance. spent 25 minutes on joint mobility, drill remediation.

"Ziggy"
2 Handed Swing x :30 fast and loose x :30
Swing L x :30 R x :30
2 Handed Hot Potato x :60
Racked FRSQT x :30 R X :30 L
Push Press x :30 R x :30 L
Fast and Loose x :60

Light Jogging x 125 yards
Naked Get up with rolling lunge descent x 5 RL
Burpee Proper* x :60
Hindu Push Up x :60
Alt. Reverse BW Lunge x 10 RL

2 Handed Swing x :60
Fast and Loose x :30
Hot Potato x :60
BW Squat X :60 [slow, like 8 reps]
Push Up x 10 slow and hard style

Workout Constructed and administrated by JD Garfield RKC/Crossfit certified.
*10 Count burpee with deep 1] squat to haunches 2] plant hands 3]kick legs back tight and together 4] spread the legs wide and keep 'em tight 5] push up eccentric 7] Concentric 8]leg return 9knee to chest 10]hip extension/jump, landing, repeat. In the 'Corps we called 'em 8 count bodybuilders, minus the jump at the top.

Followed up this workout with a Super Acai bowel at Robex Juices. Blended and frozen Acai pulp/berries, sprinkled with unsalted granola and a half of a banana, sliced. Killed 40oz of H20, feelin' it. It is time I put the microphone away for today. Go read somone'e blog and learn something. Spread the love, share the wealth.

Today's Special

I learned quite a bit from this trip to Denmark and the follow through in IllAdelph PA this month. I would like to share with you my workout and thoughts for today.

Press 20KG x 2 sets RL with 1:30 between.
20KG Renegade Rows x 3 sets of 5
20kg DBL FRSQT x 2 sets of 5
See Saw Press 20kg x 5 reps
32kg Swing x 20

It felt incredible to move through patterns again. In case you did not know, my entire life has been spent combating pain of all forms, and since the winter holiday last year I have badly sprained and ankle, blown my back out from ONE miscue during Joint Mobility, and been ejected from a mountain bike onto concrete, face-plant stylee, at 25MPH. So yeah, to see my Comrades RKCs in Europe, My Friends, who are my family, in PA, and have an amazing time, only to return to CA and begin training again, is a real reat for this boy. Anytime I have a thought I am going to throw it out there. Kia, Joe, Sarah, Dan Kane RKc, H-Town [Shade, Gutch, Squirrel] and my immediate bloodline, thank you for making this trip the tipping point. Follow the link in this post's title and get your learn on with a perspective touting lemon water for health.

W2 OUT

1600 Hours Training addendum: Placed yesterday's waxed bell inthe shade and got 37/37 with my 24kg first gen Dragon Door bell. A pleasenat tax to my grip as well as my heavy mettle.

Wax Ecstatic

Here it comes.

The scenario many [all] of us have endured is as follows, with slight deviations for chronology and character- *Tsnatching bells, whether a salt dog veteran or a boot swinger pup, your hands take a beating. the bell gets Irish on your hands. Few of us can recall a period between Dragon Door Ground Zero
and 2003 when bells were prone to rust but had a finish that wore down easily with the ballistic practice. Present day reality: Bells will shred your hands. Chalk only makes it worse, by aiding in removing moisture from your paw only to quicken the ripping process, and climber's resin lasts for a set of low-rep swings and then two pumps its' way out of the spot. I come to you with tales of lubrication, rejuvenation, dedication, and innovation. Rub a block of wax around the handles of your bells. No doubt, verily 'tis the friction of your hand meeting bell which can only be endured by a substance known for it's constant displacement and rebirth under heat. Pick up the phone, it's for you. What kind of wax? Ask Daniel M. Kane MD RKC 2007 Age 60, who seals his own jars of preserves with the compound at the posh royale estate 'Cilcilcote' in serene Devon, PA, abreast of his lovely wife Candice. He will tell you paraffin wax. This man came to train with me at age 50 something and was a certified RKC within 3+ years. The wax was his idea, and he maintains that when placed on the bell before any reps are performed, you will escape the wrath. If you are nursing your hands back to health [recent RKC attendees] you may benefit from the lesser degree of torture on your mitts, yet when the hands are 100% [rest is required], and you begin again you will know no other joy than Tsnatching kettlebells.
Kettlebellers are waay outside the box, this is said emphatically for the RKC, or, the Russian Kettlebell Community, should feel at home adopting a practice of young groms and hard dogs who wax their stick with Zoggs, or Sticky Bumps to stay glued to the board. This merry band of mammals with a pair of racked bells deserves the chance to rep out and rip into some sets without dogging a nervous system with extra weight. Save your hands now. Heal the wounds as you search for wax on the internet, just grab a puck and rub copiously along the handles curves and contours. Call me when you break 222 in the USSSST.

*Tsnatches, the Tsar of Kettlebell lifts.

Training addendum: 1045 Thursday 15 May, Hike 'Julie' in Caballero Canyon, Encino. Time up and down 56:02. Ate a green apple [way too fast, as I aim to chew my food to liquid these days], have been sipping water to respect the 92 degree cloudless day,and plan to wax on and perform my RKC Tsnatches in LT 30 minutes.

Cab Ride to K0BENH@VEN

Big day out part VI. Forget about parts I-V. Upon return to the states, I have yet to digest what actually happened in DK. For a block of nearly 96 hours, including travel, the rotation of the earth appeared to key off the kinetic sweat from the kizmet kids up in Farum, Denmark. A crowd of 60 strong like a parade of colors made their way through through an expertly planned and executed certification spanning 72 calendar hours, 23 of which composed the training schedule. 'Twas a sight to behold, such a unique sea of faces and presence [to the toothless American, at least] come in step towards a glorious goal that saw them crossing the line in the sand that they drew with their very own feet.
Day one in DK was a bath in a murky fountain channeling jet lag runoff and anxiety. I feared a day at loss for travel plans could break my moto*, it did not. T1 was born under a blue sky that wept light moisture around the meadows that ensconced the Farum Park Hotel Sports Konference Center. Super dope facility that will have you pumped to have come to train AND kick it in the zero hours for tasty chow, as well as in the post work atmosphere of "UGH", accomplishment, and excitement for the moment it actually crescendos. Beyond the hotel, the village of Slangeruup houses the sports training center, a big block of rock with a nice lunch area, multiple offices on several floors and a room to serve as the CP for the training evolution. Assistants weighed in personnel, and snatch tests were administered. Not all faces cleared their numbers, and brief moments of mathematical mayhem stalled us for a half-step, but when Uncle Rif rocked the mic for swings, we knew it would be alright. This trip had some serious personal implications for me, and in order to avoid a shot clock violation, i'll say this: Thank you [John Pavel Rif Doug Mark John E. Nicole Kevin KJ Darlene(!)].
On a professional note, this cert was also unique in that the training manual celebrated it's 17th edition, while Pavel implemented a rewritten schedule for the 734th time. 734 is also the number of swings TRif has done since you started reading this post. Without a single misfire, or a real hassle from any angle, this cert served as a preview for the next age in the RKC, marked by streamlined efficiency, a patrol pack full of enabling and remedial drills, and password so you may login to your muscle software. If you are on the fence for any reason at all about attending the RKC, be it GMT-6 or Greenwich +1, or the homespun version held four times a year in St. Paul, you should know that the face melting guitar solo is about to begin. The twin eagles on our crest will spew fire upon your gut and emblazon upon your human flesh the tension/relaxation ratiator armor plate repluzor raygun. There is no sharper edge than the blade we wield, and no message more pure than the verbs and maneuvers we pipe ours with.

Team Will, Congrats.
Class of May 2008,
Slainte.

Carry On,
W2

*motivation