Another day in paradise, w/philosophy

Jon:
First real day with class at the beach. No victims though. Not really unexpected. I guess it takes a little time to get people to actually get their act together and get down there. We practiced teaching on each other though. Or more correctly: I practiced on my lovely wife.
Well, it's always hard to practice on someone you know and especially on someone who already has an excellent technique but who has to pretend to suck. Well, it's a perfect growing ground for a fight.
But as Anna so wisely stated it: "We have to get along". So that we did. It's a great experience practicing teaching on someone who knows you, are critical and on the same level as yourself. Frustrating but awarding.
We hope to get real victims/clients as soon as possible and people that we talk to seems honetly interested but if we don't.....well, juggling on playa barceloneta with your loved one ain't to bad either.
And for the raquetball playing gentleman that we met the other day: we're sorry you didn't show up today but you should try it out and here's a link to a RKC instructor in your home town. Send us a message if you like it.
Tomorrow we move into our new apartment where we will be able to hold classes on our patio. There will be more pictures to come.
Myself I am getting more and more into juggling. As you know I am doing Geoff Neuperts Kettlebell Muscle program which means that I am relieved from all traing responsibility as soon as I have done my 30 min or so of double kb-work three times a week ;). This means that I have a lot of free time on my hands and what could be a better way of using a prolonged summer and autumn AND city beach than learning to juggle with your beloved bell?
Right now my heaviest bell is 20 kg. Not much. I have two of them so it's great for double work but in itself it's less than satisfactory for the training that I've done before. For juggling though it's quite heavy. I've done some juggling before with the 32 but it's very basic moves. It takes a much lighter bell to practice the more tricky stuff.
I start with the 12 kg competition bell and then move up to the 16 kg. I have to say that the competition bells, i.e. the GS bells are PERFECT for juggling. Much better than any of the bells I've tried before even though I'm looking forward to trying the Eleiko-bells when they arrive.
KB-juggling is a little like parkour......a little. In the world where I reside, improvisation is usually considered as quite a strage animal. Workouts are usually very linear. The ideas is to develop certain aspects of fitness or strength. It might be 21-15-9 reps of pull-ups and squat thrusters as fast as possible (ouch!), (5/5/5/5/5)*5 reps of CL/MP/SQ/PP/SQ, or just one max deadlift/squat/snatch....etc. If you go into that kind of workout you sort of know what to expect. If you juggle it's kind of different.
For starters it's much harder to tell whether you succeded or not since the goal is not pre-fixed (of course it might be but than it's not really impro). What you are looking for is more a feeling than something else. A feeling of satisafaction, of flow. I guess you can say that you're looking for the same kind a feeling when you're doing a "regular" workout but then the rules for when that feeling should occur is more regulated by the inherent rules of the workout itself. When it comes to improv though these rules are much more ZEN-like, or if you want, more ethical. They are, with Pavel's words, "within the honour system". You know whether you have succeded or not, not based on how your performance compares to others or your own prior performances, but based on how you feel. It's an ethic more comparable to such arts as skateboarding or parkour than to established sports.
Second: since juggling is (not necessarily so but the way I try to do it) an improvised pursuit it put other demand on the body than non improvised puruits does. For example: if you have a decent swing tecnique you can fairly easy work your way up the kb weight ladder. Even a quite weak and tiny person as myself can swing a heavy bell like the 48 kg "beast" with a little practice. The reason behind this is that that swing, done correctly, is a very consistent movement. When it's done right it looks exactly the same every time which enables me to foresee all of it's demands on my body. Juggling however is much too complex to foresee in this way. It requires a level of quick adaptation and flexibility that are usually absent in regular training/workouts but that are generally a big part of the everyday demands on our body. Regaining balance after slipping, catching a falling glass, dodging a punch or getting out of the way of a speeding car.
I'm not saying all training should be improvised or non-linear. We need to train in stable conditions to build strength and to develop skills. But I also think that we need to break out of the pre-ordered box, to break out of our confort zone if you will, and develop our strength is the realm of chaos (well, maybe not total chaos, I am a philosopher so I do understand the difficulties of this concept, but the slight chaos).
However, working out in an only linear fashion is like training a martial art without sparring. It's doable and there's not anything necessarily wrong with it but it is a kind of false advertising. Espessialy if it's labeled "functional" training.
Finally I would just like to say that the more I watch TUF, the more I like GSP. What an athlete, what a coach, what a guy!