Clark's First Ramblings

Hello Everyone! I hope this post finds you all doing well...How ever many of you there are or aren't, I hope you're doing well. My name is Clark, and I'm the husband half of the Mad, Mad Masons. I'm not the talented blogger Michelle is. I'm more of a rambler, but it does, on occasion, make for some pretty funny reading. So, anytime I'm the one posting, sit back, relax, and let's just see what happens, 'kay?

I'm going with something of a shotgun approach today, as I'm going to be writing on two topics. Pictures are forthcoming to go along with my first topic. We went out into our yard this morning and assembled the equipment we use on a regular basis for our training. We wanted to take pictures of our play ground, so we could share them with you and allow you to get a sense of what goes on around here. In the pictures that will be posted, now or later, you will see: 2 tires, one for flipping, one for dragging; 2 50 ft. sections of damaged fire hose which we use for "RopesGoneWild" work; 10 kettlebells of various weights; 5 clubbells ranging from 10lbs to 25lbs; a JungleGym system; 2 Olympic bars with weight plates from 2.5lbs to 45lbs; 2 homemade medicine balls, one 17 lbs, one 25lbs; Finally, you have us, the most versatile equipment in the arsenal. We work with our own bodies as much as with the equipment, sometimes in conjunction, sometimes independently.

In Michelle's first blog, she mentioned how we started on this quest to get in shape. One thing she didn't mention, was how we used to be in shape. I wrestled, trained in Aikido, climbed and rappelled. Michelle played softball, bowled, climbed, rappelled and was a diver. For me, once I got to university and started to get into the whole social end of things, it was so easy to let myself go, to eat whatever I wanted, to skip working out, whatever. It didn't happen to Michelle until after we got married. I think I was a bad influence on her. Anyway, after we got married, we just continued in this lifestyle. Life began to happen, we got busy chasing that good ole American Dream. Our bodies were paying the price. As the result of a spiritual reawakening, we woke up to what was happening to us physically, and we knew we needed to find our way back. I've said all this so I can now start getting to my point. When we got back to work, we started with the conventional, popular, "normal", accepted fitness approaches. They didn't really do anything for us. I'm not knocking conventional fitness, because I know it has done great things for some people...just not us.

This is kind of where Michelle's first post comes in. We began to look into different bodyweight systems, clubbells, kettlebells, body flow and joint mobility. We began to slowly build a formidable little industrial, non conventional gym, if you will. Without high dollar machines or gym memberships, we have been blessed to be able to build lean, strong, functional bodies, with which we occasionally have the opportunity to out perform some who still subscribe to the conventional. If you want examples of this, we can share them with you...just ask.

Michelle just came in and told me I'm a typing fool, so I must be getting long winded. Sorry. I'll get on to what we did today. Today was the inaugural run through of what I believe to be a Clark Original. If it's not, if it's been done before, I'm sorry. Last night, I was inspired to come up with this workout, and I named it "Bad Blood." Michelle said I named it appropriately, as there were points during the routine she wanted to kill me, and had bad blood towards me.

Here it is
A: Tire drag 50m + double kettlebell snatch+double kettlebell swing. Snatches and swings done for same length of time it takes to complete the drag.

B: Tire flip 50m + kettlebell thrusters + either kettlebell front or overhead squats. Again, the thrusters and squats are performed for the same length of time as the flip.

You do one round of A. Then, one round of B. You come back, make another pass through A. You guessed it, you then repeat B, giving you four rounds. For round five, you do 30 second sprints of every exercise you performed in A and B, trying to do as many of each as you can, in their respective 30 seconds. Halfway through, I was wishing for ruby slippers I could click together and be taken away to another place.

To go back for a second to my first rant....To get yourself where you want to be physically, you don't need fancy health clubs or a beautiful PecDec machine. You don't have to subscribe to the body building mentality, or do the work of a bodybuilder. You've been blessed with the greatest, most complex machine in existence. Learn to work with it. Having the equipment like we have is fun and it adds some spice to it all. We added pieces slowly. It took us 2 years to get the kettlebell collection to where we have it. You can even make some of your own equipment, like we did with our medicine balls and some of our other pieces. Have fun with it all.

11/28/08 Our WOD

How'd you handle all of the Thanksgiving food? Did you indulge? We sure did! I ate a full plate and then found myself nibbling the rest of the day. Let's not talk about the pumpkin cheesecake to top it all off. The leftovers today need no mention either, lol. I was too busy eating to see how bad Clark did, but to hear him talk, he ate his share too.

We knew we had a lot of work to do today, so we pulled out the Ole Notebook to find a good workout. Oh wait, you don't know about our notebook, do you? We were finding such amazing material on-line that we started a spiral notebook of workouts. Anytime we come across a good workout, we pull out the notebook and write it down. When we can't figure out what we want to do, we go to the notebook and pick a workout. Clark and I are both proud to say that we have both invented our first original workouts and they are recorded in the notebook too. :-)

This must be our Maxwell week because we picked out another Maxwell killer! Here is what it looked like:

A1: 12 Thrusters (I used 2 24 lb kettlebells and Clark used 2 44 lb kettlebells)
A2: 8 Pullup Knees to Elbows (I opted for just the KTE today because this is a long one)
A3: 15 Bicycles

Repeat "A" for 5 rounds

Rest for 70 seconds

B1: 12 Double Snatches (I used 2 18 lb kettlebells for this one and Clark used 2 44 lb kettlebells)
B2: 30 seconds of Box Jumps (we don't have a box built yet, so we do plyometric jumps instead).
B3: 8 Renegade Rows (I used 2 24 lbers and Clark used 2 44 lbers)

Repeat "B" for 4 rounds

Rest for 60 seconds

C1: 20 Clubbell Mills with 15 lb clubbell (I have not mastered this yet, so I did 20 double kettlebel swings with 2 24 lbs kettlebells)
***The original woekout called for 20 Alternating Shield Casts with the clubbell***
C2: 10 Iranian Pushups (again, I haven't mastered this yet, so I did 10 hindu pushups)
C3: 20 Hammer Swings (Clark used a 35 lb kettlebell on a towel and I used a 15 lb clubbell) ***the original workout called for 6 to 8 two handed shield casts.

Repeat "C" for 4 rounds

We were both feeling good through round one. On round 2 we were feeling it. By round 3 we were hating life, lol! We had talked about doing a second shorter workout to top the day off, but we changed our minds by the end of this one! WHEW, it was a true tail kicker!

We staggered our workouts today. I started A one round ahead of Clark so that my 70 sec. rest would be during his last round of A. We did this so that we could take pictures to share here on the blog. We took way too many and couldn't decided which ones to post, so here is a slide show of our day. It makes me tired and sore just looking at it again!

Thanksgiving Workout, lol!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We woke up early this morning to get a workout in before the cooking began. If there is anything that will help you make it through Thanksgiving Day without gaining weight, it is revving up your metabolism. We decided to do another Maxwell workout. We did MaxerciseMetabolic300. It is done with double kettlebells at 1/3 to 1/2 of your body weight. Clark used his 36 lbers and I used my 24 lbers. There are different variations to this workout on Maxwell's website, but this is what our workout looked like today:

15 double kb swings
15 double kb snatches
15 front squats
15 double clean and press
15 renegade rows

3 minute rest

15 clean and jerks
15 bent over rows
15 front squats (Clark opts to do overhead squats rather than front squats on these...I say "more power to ya baby!")
15 high pulls
15 crush pushups

3 1/2 minute rest

15 kb thrusters
15 alternating rows
15 high pulls (Clark opts for snatches here rather than high pulls...again "More power to ya baby.")
15 jump shrugs
15 pushups on handles

3 minute rest

10 alternating see saw press
10 kb figure eights (one each side to count as one) into 10 slingshots on each side (this was a change from maxwell's original workout...he called for alternating rows again).
10 maxwell manmakers (clean it, put kettlebells down, sprawl to pushup position, pushup, jump up to start again).
50 meter bear crawl with the kettlebells (maxwell calls for 25 meters). I have a hard time with bear crawls, so I do mountain climbers for the amount of time Clark does the bear crawls.
15 double kb swings

This is probably the 3rd time I have tried this workout and it continues to kick my tail each time I try it! WHEW! It will get the heart going and the muscles burning!

Maxwell's Kettlebell Doubles

For about 3 months we were doing Maxwell's Double Kettlebell routine every Monday and Friday (often as a starter to another workout). The workout includes:

Double Snatches for 30 seconds followed by a 30 second rest.

Double Clean and Push Press for 30 seconds followed by a 30 second rest.

Double Kettlebell Thrusters for 30 seconds followed by a 30 second rest.

Double Front Squats for 30 seconds followed by a 30 second rest.

Double Renegade Manmakers for 30 seconds followed by a 30 second rest.

Repeat the above for a total of 5 rounds.

One day we decided to pull out the camera and snap some pictures of this kick tail workout! Clark took it to a whole new level to train for his PAT at fire academy and started in full bunker gear. At different parts along the way Clark had to shed layers of gear because this was near the end of August in central FL and we were pushing 100 degrees. Clark was using his 2o Kilo (44 lb) kettlebells and I was using my 12 kilo (24 lb) kettlebells.

The Beginning

6 years ago Clark and I were preparing to go overseas to serve as missionaries in South Korea. The company that was sending us required extensive physical testing before we could leave. Through the many doctors appointments and tests we soon discovered just how "out of shape" we had gotten over the years. Clark was only 29 at the time and he was put on cholesterol medicine and told he needed to lower his blood pressure. Although my tests came back normal, the doctor did tell me that I needed to start moving a bit more or I could be in the same shape as him before I knew it. Once all the results were in and we saw just how bad it was, we made a commitment to each other to "Get in Shape."

We had NO idea what "getting in shape" would mean. We started separately with me doing TheFirm and Clark working with Power90 (before there was Power 90 X, lol). We saw some weight start to come off, but we weren't satisfied with the results. We turned to the Internet and started searching something more. We came across MattFurey and his "Combat Conditioning." Through him we learned all about body weight exercises such as the Hindu Squats and Hindu Push ups. That pushed us a little more and satisfied us for a while, but it wasn't long before we were on the hunt again! From Furey's site, we found TonyCecchines and started doing his workout called "The Lucky 13." It was a challenge for our out of shape tails, but again we wanted something more diverse and started hunting again. This time Cecchines lead us to ScottSonnon at RMax International. He was the first person to introduce us to kettlebells and clubbells. We also learned (and are still learning) a lot about his "Body Flow" techniques to keep your joints working at their full range of mobility. We couldn't order kettlebells yet, but we had 5 clubbells and a set of kettlegrips to start with. We absolutely fell in love with kettlebells and this Sonnon lead us to another discovery, Pavel. We dove into Pavel's kettlebell workouts and saw results like never before. We ordered our first kettlebells from Dragon Door in December of 2006. Having the real thing made a world of difference and we couldn't get enough! Through Pavel we soon found AnthonyDiLuglio at Art of Strength. He takes all of the kettlebell moves that we had learned from Pavel and put them in amazing workouts. He has also taught us many other exciting techniques and tools that we will share about in blogs to come.

In all of our research on the Internet we have also discovered two other amazing resources. SteveMaxwell comes up with some workouts that will kick your tail like none other! He gives ideas on using the resources around you rather than needing expensive equipment and a full gym. We absolutely love to hate him, lol! If we haven't had our tails kicked enough, we just run over to MarkTwight's gym, GymJones, and find a few workouts. They post their daily workouts, so it is a great resource of ideas to try yourself. Once you start, you will see results, and then you will be hooked!

So, that's our journey so far. We have come a long way and learned a lot. However, that journey is far from over and we have a lot more to learn. We are on a mission to be in the best shape of our lives now. I am happy to say that Clark is no longer on any meds and after his last physical was told he has the heart of a 24 year old. Obviously something we have been doing is working. Eventually we hope to be certified trainers doing one on one personal training, or dare I say, maybe even opening a training center of our own. Clark and I are going to document our journey here. We are going to share workouts, tips, great websites, ramblings, and probably a few rants. We hope you will join us in that journey.