KBLA-Anton Summers, More "Line Up" Learnings

Yet another great morning of HARD style with Kettlebells Los Angeles under the qualified instruction of Dr. Cheng's assistant Anton Summers. If you need ANY kettlebell training in Los Angeles, look Anton up. Whether Dr. Cheng is in town or traveling, it is ALWAYS worth the drive to Santa Monica for the KBLA Line Up! There can be numerous RKCs in the group on any given morning besides the chief instructor up front. Don't be shy--throw down!

I had numerous learning points this morning with Anton and the group. I'm preparing for my RKC in San Diego this August. Time for fine tuning. Anton provided more detail for me this morning which I appreciated. Here's a few summary points.

DeadLift: Really worked on getting squared up with equal tension on BOTH sides.

• Shoot both arms straight into the ground.
• Don't have ANY slack in the arms when you pick up the KB...load the tension BEFORE picking up the bell. Keep pressing it down even though you pick it up.
• "Pull" hips forward--just don't drive hips forward with glutes.
• Keep a long neck with maximum space between ears and shoulders, or as Doc says, "NO chicken necks!"
• "Happy Faces" i.e. relaxed necks and face remind us to keep the tension BELOW the shoulders but not above into the neck and face.

Single Leg DeadLift: Great for equalizing the tension. Makes you really aware of what is not locked and what is.

• Put KB on outside of foot right at mid point in length. We discussed this a bit. It's easier to do this when you are learning because you don't get the rotational twist like you do when the KB is on the inside of the foot. A double KB DL on one leg would be even one more step lower to get someone going, so I guess were sort of in the middle level this morning. It worked much better than what I was doing before.
• Even though you have "one" bell, pretend you are picking up two suitcases. Keep the tension equal on BOTH sides of body all the way through.
• FULLY extend the hips at top lockout. People get lazy with this on the SLDL.

Dead Cleans: Yet another tension equalization exercise! I really recalibrated on this today!

• Build pressure before picking up bell. It's very important to keep the core squared up. Don't let your shoulders unlock and rotate. Think lower body! Drive with legs--not shoulders. This really helps to keep the knees from flying all over the place which I see sometimes.

Clean & Press: Kept working on the pre-lift pressure thing with this one too.

• Point well taken that your "clean" sets up your "press." If you have a crappy clean, you have a crappy press.
• When you reset or rack, you MUST rebuild tension before the next press.
• We also worked on some single leg pressing which lets you know in a hurry if you don't have equal lock and tension on BOTH sides!

Light Clean & Press: I then went from 24k to 16k and worked on pressing the body into the ground AWAY from the bell instead of just pressing up the bell or extending the arm. These were way harder than they looked...HAAARD style...Enjoy!

• The critical point here was to NEVER let the shoulder elevate. Keep packed and horizontal throughout the whole lift. A lot of people will let shoulder elevate then when they lock out the arm will set the shoulder back down. Going light, we worked on keeping the packed shoulder more effectively. This was a good drill. I'm going to work on this next week.

Snatch: Applying all the above, you can really decrease the stress on your shoulder and arm as you drive out of hips and legs.

• I made an interesting observation of Anton. When he snatches, it's like his elbow stays glued to his ribs. He can do that because he's not "lifting" the KB with his arm--he's driving it from below with legs and hips. This was HUGE for me today. I'm going to regroove this a bit.

It's been a mind-blowing week for me. Literally! I've been up to my arse in Gray Cook DVDs, Functional Movement Screen notes, Dr. Cheng blog posts, Pavel stuff, my God!!! I think I've added about 30% to my working knowledge and application just in the last week alone. The whole corrective exercise scene is really exciting. I'm turning into a biomechanics geek I think. Instead of listening to music, I've been listening to Gray Cook podcasts...

Speaking of podcasts, I was listening to Rif's podcast with the new kettlebell secrets series the other day. He had a great comment something to the effect of, "Do you want to be entertained or do you want results and progress?" How true! So many people want to be "entertained" instead of getting to work and busting some butt to make real changes. The sooner people realize that health and fitness is WORK, the better off they will be. It's not like everyone has to be brutal on every workout--that's not what he's talking about. It's just old school let's get to work and get something of real value done and stop screwing around with things that don't really matter...that can take you a long way in health and fitness Comrades...words of wisdom for sure. Thanks Rif.

If you want to check out Anton Summers, you can contact him on his website below:

http://santamonicatraining.com

So as usual, no matter what your workout choice...Enjoy!

From a HARD Style SoCal, Coach RJ!