Final edition:
Since 2002, not once did any single body who has given me money asked for proof of certification, though twice i have been asked by a private client to provide certificate of insurance. Both times i was competent. Several times i had been required by J&J subsidiaries to provide the blah blaggity blah and of course Main Line Ketttlebells was at the ready. But never have i had to prove to anyone that i am a certified personal trainer or kettlebell instructor. If that is fact, which i am daggone sure it is, i am going to infer that my ability to present myself in any manner appropriate has allowed me to secure funds for one or many bodies in exchange for instruction, both on and off paper.
So what is it that i do? I sell stuff. I sell something i can do with little distress and from what i am told i am beyond competent. Nonetheless i am in sales. Pure and simple.
Fewer than 3 or 4 times i have refunded clients for either a scheduling conflict or an inability on my part. So nearly 98% of everything Ive taken in since 2002 has been taxed and trained out. If i am in a position where i ask for something, receive it often, and recycle nearly 75% of said thing [Benjamins], it would be prudent of me to ask more. Yes, yes it surely would.
There are only so many hours a week that i can book sessions and though there are an infinite number of bodies in the opportunistic sense, there are only so many years my bones can get me paid. After that i'll be smart to have laid groundwork in another income stream that doesn't also compel my body to perform at a certain level. That way i may just be able to train at liesure [the pursuit of information]. I should not even fathom the withdrawal my spirit will meet when i perform my final training session, but if i want to look back and smile i simply GOT TO look forward now. Tally ho neighbors!
And what of the career shift and the lost projected income from a departure with 2004-present mothership Dragon Door? I got this.
I split RKC before words or energies got ill from either side so i'll be sure to say thank you now to JDC and Pavel and Team, as they put me where i'm at, and i'm eternally grateful [cue the Aliens]. I won't step on any nuts but in this future i may answer a few questions with a bit of passion and maybe some misinterpreted enthusiasm [you may misinterpret it as Haterlyness, a syndrome common to Haters in the City of Haterly Hate].
And here is why leaving the Russian Kettlebell Challenge is going to enable me to ask, and receive, better of myself.
Teaching exercise is a hairy operation and if safety is a priority well daggone then so is uderstanding what safe is. Safe is effective and safe is better, however: safety has an alarm system that while unique in sensitivity to the system it protects, has common signals that anyone can recognize if they are trained and diligently signal sensitive as well.
BOOYAKAHSHA [four syllables]
Safety could be the trainer whom may be afraid to extend their clients into any perceived danger zone for any myriad reason. A client of many years on earth or a 30 year old with cardiac issues. Whatever the case. I feel i have learned somethings about safety that make exercising more accessible to the population. I feel i have learned a set of variables that may be aligned into a protocol which lets the individual human operating system fire on all of its' respective cylinders that session. Each lesson can move the body towards 'better' in multiple avenues or maybe that day only a single avenue, yet the resonance of
better shows us the result. Each day another chance to forward march in the most adaptable direction. Perpetual progress?
Have you read anything with regard to 'thinking and growing wealthy'? Have you ever heard someone speak of putting positive energy 'out there' and hoping it is well recieved? Have you watched a television show or film which depicts the archetypal 'new age' person? Yeah that's what i'm talkin' about. I do believe that we can become better every day, and that many of my own chances to move forward are now clearer to me simply through application of biofeedback, or 'muscle testing' in the context of exercise for cosmetic improvement, athletic endeavors, and as an enabler to a healthy aging process.
If you are familiar with Josh Hanagarne's work over the last year you may know that heads were turned towards the Gym Movement videos and Adam T Glass' previous blog and
current website due to some things Josh was noting. In this case, i have inferred that exercise may simply be a side-door to a more grand setting, in which some of us can go full recital with the most adaptable versions of ourselves. Enter: you.
When i met the Gym Movement team, I told the couch and floor bound crew that i wanted to sleep better and make better decisions. Those were what i hoped biofeedback would enable me to do. I posited that the placebo effect has been proven in many cases to have a positive impact on the
desired outcome. My FRD* was that i controlled what i ate when the munchies arrived, and moved well enough to demo any exercise for my clients and a few more for individual fulfillment. Speaking it into molecules that night rather than allowing it to linger as a thought may have done me well. Through a season which may presently be highlighted with Awesome! and Righteous! there stood the chance for many storms and dark days setting myself adrift on memories and wallowing aplenty. Nope. Not so far, anyway.
*Final Result Desired
My movements have surprised no one yet informed more than a few. I can do things again and living does not
hurt, in the manner which it did as recently as April 27th. As well as quitting Trader Joe's to spare my body the stress, eating any and all high quality animal products after a 2 year stretch without beef or birds or any land animal, using the Gym Movement Protocol to train large movements and record/reflect the data has pushed me towards better in a velocity with which i am pleased and will honor with one of the more important things that can perpetuate the growth, that is to say, diligence.
As i do these things for myself i also pay you back for your support and the lessons you have taught me through either training with me or reading the writes. What may happen as a result from a better Me is a better You and that makes us all smiles. I can assist a client now in a manner which appeals to them on several levels and allows me to promote what
I do with what they have done. There is no voodoo here or great secret to be revealed. What i have found is a series of dots connected by a man who knows as well that he simply aligned elements of 'fitness education' and facts, both mathematical and anatomical. Much is still out there in the ether for which i am not ready, however if i use applied kinesiology
as I understand it, or muscle testing as it is commonly referred to, or Gym Movement Protocols as i will refer to it i will make you better in one way and maybe another for one reason or maybe a few more. What I know is that in many cases what you believe has a large, often unfathomable and regularly overlooked effect on the factual, historical result of what you intended to manifest. I want to get better, i ask myself questions, and then i act on the answer given. For me this is a big deal and it means that i will slow down my intake of concepts, calories, and distress, and put out better efforts through life lived with a finer focus. What i gained from working with the RKC and what i have gained in the short time that i have paid attention to frankie Faires' work, are equal to me in importance yet separate from each other. The RKC gave me experience that i will forever appreciate by turning into more experience, and information for which i have no use right now. Gym Movement has drawn on my experiences and has pointed me towards internal and external sources of information that i BELIEVE will enable me to move better, do better, and show others. I am in sales. It seems that what i sell is not relevant as a good salesman is a good saleswoman and on and such, still it matters to everyone reading this that i use what i sell and i can ask for money from people without fearing for the specifics of a warranty or a bad loan to interfere. I sell what i have done, and with the avenues available to me now, i can do better in order to both do and sell
more.
And now, that for which you came. The Russian Kettlebell Challenge versus Hardstyle in a
winner battles on event that will take place in
chat rooms, er, forums, all over the continent. And from what i hear, not having been on the forum since the end of May, a recent graceful post by John DuCane evolved into a thread about what Is and what Is Not "hardstyle", as Pavel Tsatsouline's product has come to be known. Allow me to venture a guess, as i know Pavel and i understand his intentions in using fitness as an industry from which he could profit.
"Hard style is not high tension, hard-style is the reverse engineering of what the strongest athletes in the world do naturally". Did he say something like that? If he did, read on, if not, read on. High tension uses and applications have around in martial arts and athletics for longer than we've been at it. This is a fact. However, when applied to the Russian kettlebell, to create the RKC brand of strength training, hard-style was used. So, with the debate regarding "what is or is not", and the storm pitting 'disproportionate tension' against minimal effective amounts of tension, Pavel has very little to explain but too many people will need to hear it over and over. So hear it from yer ole' Dad here agin:
"Hardstyle is not the apllication of feed-forward tension techniques and power breathing to the kettlebell" i say. Many would agree.
"The Russian Kettlebell Challenge is the execution of hard-style derived mechanics and feed-forward tension and power breathing in order to facilitate a lab on the statement that 'tension is strength' ". Do you agree? if not, read on. . .
So if tension
is strength, or if you believe that tension
equals strength, you are of the belief that i subscribed to and aimed to honor for over 8 years. I cam to the conclusion in March of this year that my beliefs were broken and i could break myself of them and at once fix myself up.
I could not stand along the talented and experienced team of instructors anymore for i did not beleive in their ideals and goals and manner of approach. I believe now that power breathing and feed forward tension are reactive in the human body and are signals which very well should be listened to, and not overridden, in an exercise/training context. When Pudzianowski or Coan lift an object, it weighs a bunch of pounds and the goal of the lift is the record of the lift. They train specific to how they are paid to perform so that is that. Pavel connected some dots with elements of martial arts and power-lifitng, antithetical to Girevoy Sport, the long standing primary use for kettlebells in Russia. My clients want to look and feel a certain way and i feel that for all the cosmetic clients i have that teaching them to recognize and manage the elements of effort rather than 'inputting' them is what i will do, as a teacher, that does not qualify me as an RKC instructor, let alone a Senior enabled to teach one-day certifications representative of Dragon Door Publications. When my athetes train we will have an understanding that in competition you unhinge the safety buckle nearly all of the time, yet in training we operate in a capacity that hopefully informs us of the most direct route to unconcious competence. Train signla sensitive, and play like you are outside of your head. When my clients train for cosmetics, we are seeking the most fruitful avenue that day and will go with the bodies' natural pattern and clean the lift up from a teaching standpoint in the least invasisve manner we can. Not everyone's movements can or should look like something a trainer may desire as successful. But if it tests well and i can record what happened, we'll train it.
RKC stands to green light things like
-disproportionate tension
-local muscular focus
-verbal cueing during repetition drills or enabling exercises
-power breathing, fed forward
-corrective exercise
Ok, so that's why i left and what i'll teach differently. And if you're feelin' me or not here, you may feel me on this: The Russian Kettlebell Challenge is still my 'touchstone' with respect to the kettlebell, as excommunicated yet out of exile USAW Coach Randy Hauer said. And wouldn't you know that the Naked Warrior also Gave me The Goods on GTG*. And my homeboys
Hubaki and
Duffman [not an actual photo of said dude], who knows about Battlestar and Cacprica, feel me when i reference the
STO is how i'd hilariously depict myself as a true poseur if i believed that there were simply a
single avenue towards your final result desired. So please note that i have accrued some hours in teaching and traveling that may be paid back to you if i simply provide the best elements of my education into your physique transformation with an order of operations that puts "results before beliefs". I would do right by myself to honor the rest of my life by asking better questions and waiting for an answer, and in turn payback your cash and checks with the Gym Movement testing protocols and instruction model while encouraging you that a
PReveryday is within reach and if you start where you are rather than where anyone else posits, you will progress in any of the available ranges of motion and avenues of approach. And what's more is that i can't call it a what the heck effect but the recent movements I've tested well for have nearly all involved inversion. So here i am with the inverted posture and the future like "Sgt. Peppers" vinyl and a mirror.
*Grease The Groove
All physical training i do, save for situations in which i am brought in to provide information on a limited scale, e.g. my present status on a Tactical Athlete and Crossfit Kettlebell Instructor level may only call for me to teach bells but not GM testing, will be guided by testing and regard the Elements of Effort as "yellow" and "red" lights under load, and allow for less visibly appealing movement if it proves to be safe and tests well in the immediate sense.
With no connection to RKC i now have to find myself new clients. I need to get a wee bit closer to converting those hours i referenced earlier with the bodies i mentioned in the same breath. And by asking smarter things of myself and using better, more finely focused means of attracting clients, i should be able to convert the hours to dollars and travel and exchanges that have a product which could never be logged in type the impact so grand to me. And unto others i suppose, as "the whole darn human comedy keeps. . . perpetuatin' itself".
These were taken Monday AM after the My Morning Jacket show.
