Still here!

Hey all, just checking in for a quick moment.  Life is so busy right now not much time to blog or post.  But rest assured I am still living the primal lifestyle, working with my kettlebell and running my fool arse off in my vibrams.  Spring is about to hit and I am prepping the garden for planting, relaying out the interior of our house, and running around like a crazy man.


Hope you are all keeping busy too!!!
Poppabear.

RKC conditioning Success!!!!

 

I did it.
15 a side full turkish get ups.
15 a side Clean and Press
200 2hd swings.
same training session in under 40 mins with my 35lb kettlebell. I can now get my 53 pounder!
It will be weeks before I will have the money to buy it, so I will spend the time working on this conditioning, making it easier, taking less time, and working on my form.

It wasn't easy, but it didn't kill me either. The more I do it, the easier it will become, and when I can afford my 53 pounder I'll be in even better shape to use it once it gets here.

Hell Yeah!!!! 

Poppabear

Feeling under the weather

The whole family has been fighting the flu for about a week now.  We are all hanging in there.  I'm Just about over the whole thing, and as soon as I am, there will be some new blog entries.  I have been taking this down time to think about the focus of my blog, and how to make it stand out among all those other primal/paleo blogs out there.   I've got a few ideas...

I will share them with you soon.
Poppabear.

The primal week that was

30 day primal challenge - day 44~!

Not a lot of time this morning, or a ton of stuff to talk about, so I'm just going to jump right in with the weigh in.

Starting weight: 192 lbs.
Last week Weight 183 lbs.
Today's weight: 182 lbs.
Goal weight: 170 ish.

It's official I'm down 10 lbs.  (happy dance)

And, I've done it with moderate exercise, and nutrition.  All by following the guidelines of "The Primal Blueprint" and "The Paleo Solution."  Simple natural weight loss with ZERO stress.  I simply made it my lifestyle, and do it everyday with every meal.  Simple.

Set your goals, my friends.  But keep them flexible.  Goals are nothing more than a mark to shoot for.  You can't be so hung up on hitting that exact mark, that it becomes your entire focus for trying at all.  That causes stress, pain, frustration, etc.  And you know Poppabear is all about avoiding stress.  Shouldn't we all be?

More later.. I have a happy dance to do.
Poppabear.

 

Making it Natural

Okay, so here’s a hard one.  How do we make natural come natural?  Our lives are so busy, so full of stress, so full of super important crap that we just cant forget about for just one second.  How are we supposed to relax, eat right, and exercise also?

We have to make it natural and forget about it.  It’s not  “I’m on a diet” it’s just how I eat.  Lets all take a deep breath for a second and get our minds clear.  This is bound to be a rambling post, but bare with me.

The easiest way to make a massive life change is to embrace it, make the change, and forget about it.  Figure out what works, and once you have that set in your skull, make the change and don’t spend anymore time thinking about it, but be ready to absorb new info as it comes in.

Example: 1

I have read both Mark Sisson’s The primal blue print, and Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution.  I’ve read through all the chewy science bits, looked at them and said, “Well, that makes a lot of sense. I agree.”  And after that I don’t worry about it.  It may be easier for me to dump large quantities of info out of my skull once I read it and make my judgment.  But, it works.  Sure, if I ever have to give a talk on the subject of insulin in front of a large group I will have to do some quick cramming.  But, until that happens I am not going to stress over it.

Example: 2

It is so much easier to remember a small list of things that I don’t want to eat rather than 30 reasons why they are bad for me for every food on that list.  I can navigate the basic reasons with little thought, and that’s all anyone who asks what this whole primal/paleo thing is all about wants to hear anyways.  If they want more info, I point them to the experts.  The massive amount of information available to us can be overwhelming.

These are my own little ways of relaxing, and avoiding stress.  This approach has worked very well for me.  If I’m not worrying about the reasons, or second guessing facts I’ve already agreed with, the entire lifestyle is so much easier.  So much more natural.

Oh, this doesn’t at all mean I have quit learning about the paleo/primal lifestyle.  Far from it.  I read around 20 blogs a day, chat on Facebook with primal friends, tweet my little tweets back and forth with the community, and of course educate others in the BASICS.  But it is relaxed, there is no stress.  I don’t worry about when I’m going to eat, what I’m going to eat, when I’m going to train, or if I’m training too much. 

Just relax my friends, and enjoy the ride.

As I’ve said, this was going to be a rambling post.  The words were falling out of my head faster than I could organize them.  I would love to hear any thoughts you all might have on this subject.

Poppabear

By the way... I do quite a bit of chatting and posting on Facebook and twitter, as I have said above.  If you would like to send me a friend invite please do, or you can follow me on twitter @PoppabearsCave.

The Primal week that was

And what a week it has been! I am on day 37 of my 30 day primal challenge as we speak, and have been taking this last week to drive my efforts up a notch.  This week I began training in earnest to reach my fitness goals.  To this end, I’ve gotten a new coach, A man who inspires me with his fitness approach, Mike French.  It’s a good two for one deal, as his wife Tami French is also an amazing coach and helps me out as well.

I have really been reaching the intensity I’ve been searching for in my training sessions lately.  It’s not just going through the movements any more trying to get finished.  It’s focused and every rep is as close to perfect as I can get it.

The RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge) conditioning is coming along very nicely, I feel stronger every day!  I really want to push myself and buy a heavier Kettlebell, but I have a training plan and am going to stick to it until I can make the requirements, which are:

200 2hand swings (done)

20 a side Clean & Press (done)

20 a side snatches (done)

15 a side Turkish get ups (not done!)

So the Turkish get ups are the focal point for progress here.  I have found a very good youtube tutorial on them here.

The running has been coming along smoothly, I have increased my distance to 4 miles, which I ran 2x this week in my Vibrams.  I finally got into the zone and it felt so good, to run by myself through the woods listening to my 80’s rock on Pandora.  At one point I was starting to flag a bit around mile 3, when “eye of the tiger” came on.  I laughed out loud and picked up the pace.

Here is the numbers for week 5:

192 week 1 weight

185 week 4 weight

183 current weight

Another nice easy 2 pounds dropped this week.  Well on my way to my goal of 170.

I LOVE THIS LIFE!!

Poppabear

A brief history of the kettlebell

The first kettlebells were brought over to America by Pavel Tsatsouline.  He swallowed several and smuggled them out of mother Russia in his stomach.  Through many hardships, long ocean voyages, storms etc, the precious cargo was safe inside the Iron Russian.  Once he reached our shores he was able to deliver the kettlebells into the eager hands of his new disciples. (Hence the reason behind the weight measurement of Pood’s for kettlebells)

Ahem…

Actually they go back quite a bit further back.  The earliest reference to the russian kettlebell was 1704, and one of the first published workouts was published in the Russian magazine “Hercules” in 1913.  Since that time it has been the workout of choice for the Russian military, and civilians.

In the 80’s the U.S. was soundly beaten by the Russian track and field team.  It was found that this was due to their extreme conditioning with kettlebells.

Then came Pavel.

See, I told you it was brief.

Next post:  Why it’s important to take supplements on a paleo, primal nutrition plan. 

Poppabear.