Sunday's HKC Prep w/ Keira Newton

On Sunday I attended a small tune-up class to make sure we were on track for our Jan 16th HKC.

As always, Keira (dkbfitness.com) is a fantastic instructor.

There were two other students, both in shape women who would put me to shame later on in the class. More on that later.

We began by trying the pull-up test.
For ladies, its either a 25 second hang above the bar, or 1 pull up. both ladies failed.
For men, its 5 pull-ups. Interestingly enough, we are allowed to do chins, which I may do just to make sure I pass.

I initially failed at my fourth tactical pull up (tactical = no thumb)

We moved on to practicing naked getups.
This is another classic example of why people need to see a trainer in person. I own the Kalos Sthenos DVD and have viewed it many times, but it was not until Keira provided finger feedback that I really started to "get it". ("push against my finger" "do you feel that" , etc...)
DVD's can only impart so much knowledge.

Next we worked on our Goblet squats.
These were different than I thought. I assumed GS went rock bottom, but we did not do that. We bent our thighs to 90 degrees and touched our elbows to our knees. You must maintain a nice flat back for this and press your chest forward. This helps bring your back more vertical. The 90 degree bend in my legs became quite tiring after a while. I didn't realize that rock-bottom squats give you a brief rest.

Next on deck, swings. the only real new info here was that over the past 2-3 months, I have been noticing a tightness on my the posterior side of my knee. I was thinking that this meant I was twisting slightly. Sure enough, when I demo'd my swing in front of everyone, they picked up on a few things.

1. my uninvolved arm was reaching far behind me, causing me to slightly twist on the down swing. They recommended that I keep my uninvolved arm even w/ my torso.
2. Keira noticed that my shoulder/lats were not staying engaged. A little more conscious thought helped some. Another tip that helped was to keep my thumb pointed back when I was at the bottom of the swing. What this ended up doing was forcing my to engage my lats more on the upswing. This tip came from a gal who is going to February's RKC.
3. I was too loose on my grip at the bottom. this was causing the bell to bonk my butt slightly. Just a bit more grip and my swings were back to where they should be.
   

So after all of our tunes ups, Keira had us do some "conditioning" work.

why is conditioning in quotes? Because saying it was conditioning would be akin to calling water-boarding a brisk shower.

I am pretty sure she was trying to kill us.

Well, actually the other two students (both full time disciples of Keira) were doing just fine. Me on the other hand. Well, I'm pretty sure my heart exploded inside my chest cavity. Several times.

It was more or less something along these lines:

Partnered Swings.
You do 5 2H Swings. Your Partner does fast & loose drills.
Partner does 5 2H Swings. You do fast & loose drills.

Next do 10 2H swings. with appropriate fast & loose drills.

Next do 15 2H swings. with appropriate fast & loose drills.

finish up with 20 2H swings. with appropriate fast & loose drills.

We then moved to a Squat-Swing-Plank sequence like this:

1 Goblet Squat - 5 1H swings (each side) - 30 Sec Plank
2 Goblet Squats - 6 1H swings (each side) - 30 Sec Plank
repeat till this final set:
6 Goblet Squats - 10 1H swings (each side) - 30 Sec Plank

all in all, it was a great 3 hour class.

T-12 days till my HKC cert!