A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

I'm currently at the instructor course at Linz, so there's not exactly much time to post. (Atcually, I'll be leaving tomorrow - it's June 25th by the time I actually publish this. Ain't much time to play around here.) I'll be posting about that course in detail once I come back. Anyhow, I've decided to post some pictures and info about my kettlebell workshop on Sunday, June 20th before the impressions fade away. On the workshop there was but two trainees of very different training levels. This made the whole event a great experience for me as I could really dig into techniques with one guy and do crazy stuff while at the same time placing great focus on details with the other guy. Actually, I did a whole lot more techniques than at the workshop I did for the instructors. Among these techniques was stuff such as the 2-hand-anyhow, catch-cleans, etc., so pretty advanced stuff. You can download the basic handout (the stuff I planned on doing, without the extras...

Todays master class was great. We trained outdoors for about 3 and a half hours. It definately was great fun. Basically we did something like this Posture correction (active standing) Joint mobilization Movement Prep (see Mark Verstegens "Core Performance") Deadlifts Unilateral Deadlifts Front Squats Swings with two hands Swings with one hand Swings with a switch Forward shocking (a technique I've leared from Dariusz Tomaszewski, basically it's all about throwing the kettlebell as far as possible from a swing) High-Pulls Swing to rack Power-Cleans Clean-To-Catch Olympic Cleans Power-Snatches Olympic Snatches Turkish-Get Ups Get-Ups via overhead squat Windmills Bent Presses Uhm, yeah, we did a lot. Obviously, this ain't what I'm going to do with the trainees on June 20th, but today was a master class for gym trainers and instructors, so I guess it was ok. As there's an error in the handout, I'll post it tomorrow. So long, take care

Tommorrow I'll be doing a master class at my teacher's dojo. The topic will be "The Art of Kettlebell Training". Sounds nice, huh? Background: At our headquarters in vienna's 8th district, Ronny (Shinergy-founder and my teacher) and Tom (captain of the Shinergy[supreme team], Shinergy[master instructor] and athletic director at our hq-dojo) have decided to remove all those puny machines from the gym and establish a pure athletic-gym. So basically, what remains is a squat rack, a bench, two power-racks, a cable pulley and a pullup-machine, accompanied of course by TRX suspension trainers, barbells, dumbbels - and, as you might already have guessed, kettlebells. Think the gym of my dreams. Now, as there's not too much people in Austria offering high-quality kettlebell tuition (I consider myself to be one of a few), it's my job to instruct our gym trainers on how to use the Kettlebell and turn a piece of iron into a lean, mean, one-stop-shop for fitness. Ok, ...

Just returned home. Today I had a hell of a day so I'll keep it short - gotta eat something and go to bed. 07:30 Just hopped onto the train to Linz, capital city of upper Austria. Today, I'll attend to a Kettlebell-Workshop led by Dariusz Tomaszewski, a strength and fitness coach of polish origin who is also member of the teaching staff at the instructor-course I'll be starting on june, 21st. Abiding to murphies law, I took with me neither a book nor a power-adapter for my laptop, so the journey will get boring soon. Also, I didn't take any water with me - gotta buy some when I arrive in Linz. 10:00 Aren't I the lucky one? At the workshop, there's a whoppin' 3 people. The rest didn't make it to Linz. According to them, they had an accident. Could be related to the great weather, though. What I'm facing now is six hours of kettlebells in a group of 3 people - sounds fun. Besides, the other guys are both martial artists, too. He, a former judo player, ...