Anybody ever tell you that you look like Steve Maxwell?

I went in to Girya about 12:30 today to train when this guy and his wife knock on my door. Lo and behold it was Steve Maxwell. Nothing earth shattering, but it was surprising.
All else is well. I've been getting more serious about my joint mobility work and delving into this Z-Health stuff. It's voodoo.

Jerking two 32 kg. kettlebells and notes on heavy swings.

Today I was able to push out two reps jerking two 32 kg. kettlebells overhead. I could have gotten more, but I decided not to push my luck. This is a decent PR for me as I wasn't even feeling close to being able to get them out of the rack a month ago, and now they went up without too much trouble. I have a lot of respect for these cats who can jerk these things for 10 minutes straight. I have no interest in doing it, but it's impressive nonetheless.
I was hitting more heavy swings on double 32's and noticed a few things.
1. Being disengaged is not an option. You have to stay tight at the top or your torso is getting ripped off.
2. Grip strength helps, and applying it more at the top.
3. Don't fight the bells on the way down. Exercise control, but use your stretch reflex and the slingshot effect.

Back to crushing blue nails.

For the past couple weeks I've been hitting a wall where I basically couldn't bend anything. I think it was a little getting burned out, and needing to roll back to address some weaknesses and form issues.
As Adam Glass pointed out I needed to get the nail up higher, which meant more shoulder flexibility. I also went back to school on my wrist strength. I started hitting the one hand shield casts with the clubs, sledge hammer leveraging, and picked up a lever block from strongergrip.com
So today I was able to take down four blue nails pretty easily. It was a good day.

Louie Simmons: Day Two

Day two was prac app. Lots of people packed in a room lifting lots of weight. I was only there for a few hours, but I picked up a lot of useful info and received some deadlift corrections from Louie that made a lot of sense. I watched Shannon Hartnett move some big weight. She is crazy strong.
After these two days I have seen that Louie's approach is not as one dimensional as some people seem to (or want to) think. Applications for sports performance from MMA to Running to Football to Throwing are all there. This is not to say it's the only way or even the best way, but it is a way, and one that works.
You have to look at everything and find what works, then adapt that to the end user, and make sure it works for them.
Below is some video from Day Two. I wasn't paying attention when I shot the video of the guy doing the Beast Pull Up. Looking back at it his shoulders are completely out of the sockets. Impressive that he did it that way, but he could be much stronger.

Louie Simmons: Day One

Day one is in the books. This was seminar format so it was a lot of talking and demonstrations. Things I already knew about now make sense. I knew, but I didn't know. I learned a lot more about working with bands, percentages, etc. I also saw a zercher harness used for the first time, and I definitely see a lot of value there. Based on everything I saw today I can see that a 500 lbs. deadlift is attainable, possibly in the next 12 months.
Tomorrow is practical application, during which we'll be working with Louie one by one to identify our weaknesses and address them.

Louie Simmons seminar this weekend

Tonight we head back to Sacramento for the Louie Simmons seminar.
Well... I guess that's really all there is to say about that until I get back. I may blog from the hotel if I have wi-fi, we'll see.
The more this kind of stuff goes down the more it's interesting to me how many different people I've been able to interact with, many of whom I never thought I would cross paths with.
Below is a video on TGU progressions for the de-conditioned.

Pressing two 16 kg. kettlebells in one hand... finally.

I've been working on this for a while, and today they finally went up. Pressing two 16 kg. kettlebells in one hand isn't like pressing a 32 kg. I'm guessing more like a 36 kg. My pressing strength is finally increasing, and I'm going to say I hit a strict military press of the 40 kg. by April 1st.
April fool's day. :)