Out of the blue and into the black - Nerd alert

Before we start I would like to issue a warning: This post is EXTREMELY nerdy. It cointains a serious discussion about the differences between different so called "Kettlebells". Readers discretion is advised.


Jon:
Nobody likes a soft present. It's always socks or something else that you "need". Hard presents are always better. Obviously it's the same with weight. The only good present that is light is money and even that is of course better if it's heavy. So what could be a better present than 380 kgs of solid cast iron? It is of course a rethorical question.
After carrying the babies four stairs and out to the terrace (it is documented) it was time to put them to work. But first a little meet-and-greet. Most of us had met before. Some more casually, others....well others were a sweet reunion between old friends. Snatching the 24 again, pressing double 24s, trying to press the 32 (didn't work, maybe tomorrow), and of course deadlifting the 56. First one and than two. I haven't lifted that much weight since I left Sweden. No problemo!
'Nuff socialising though. We have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep.
The first time doing Kettlebell Muscle with the new bells and it felt different. For me it was heavier. Especially in the press. I guess it has something to do with the mechanics of a smaller vs. a larger bell (or are the GS-bells just lighter?) Keeping them in the rack position doing front squats are much easier though since they "sink in" deeper because of their size.
It is a bit early to draw any long lasting conslusions about the differences, especially since I have a little bit of a cold and a sore throat today wich probably affected my performance yesterday, but in general they just feel heavier. Not only when you lift them but also when you look at them and to the touch. I guess it is a psychological difference. Something black and slightly rough looks heavier than something violet with a shiny handle. It is also the fact that the GS-bells weight less than they look, i.e. that they all have the same size. Picking up the 12 kg is almost like picking up a baloon.
I'm looking forward to taking the Eleiko bells to the park or to the beach and try out some juggling.

The family jewels

Anna:
For all of you who have been wondering what the deal is with the Eleiko logo:
Today your agonizing curiosity will finally come to and end, you will seize to wake up in the middle of the night between soaking wet sheets and scream our names and your soul shall find peace as from today.

The swedish company Eleiko who is producing the worlds best weightlifting equipment and is sole supplier of WL equipment to 2012 London Olympic Games have deicided to sponsor us in our conquest of Barcelona and we're happier than a girl over her first pony and prouder than a banker over his brand new porsche.

Yesterday a premature Santa disguised as a lorrydriver dropped off the biggest parcel I've ever seen outside our front door. A rough wodden box labeled Eleiko filled with 380 kilos of sweet swedish steel had arrived, and it had our name on it.


Stay tuned for the flood drill film. A documentation of when we were carrying the bells the four floors to our flat. Children first (2 x 8 kgs) and the beasts, no the überbeasts (2 x 56 kgs) last.



Meanwhile, have a listen to Billy Idol - Pumping on Steel.

Come rain or come shine....Come shine!!

The beautiful Lia doing TGU training hardstyle with a
water bottle instead of a shoe - true hard core!

Jon:
Said and done. Rx'd or whatever you prefere to call it. Saturdays are class at the beach whatever the weather Gods may say. And today the Gods listened. At 4 o'clock the Barcelona skies were blue and the air was fresh. New and old students. All dedicated and awesome.
Teaching is truly a fantastic experience. We have quite a long walk to the beach from our apartement - 30 minutes or so with one kettlebell each - and everytime we walk down there we seem to have a small argument on what we are going to do today but everytime we get there it's just smooth sailing. I suppose the both of us just love to do this. To dedicate ourselves to someone else's movements, health, physique. For me it is a quick fix for my personal idiocyncrasies and small mindedness. On the way home I'm always filled with pride over what my student has accomplished and packed with stories about their conquests. The way home is always great!

Awesome Max and Joshua playing around after killing
their first hardstyle workout

Tomorrow are handstand lessons with Oskar on the beach. If he teaches me to do the handstand I will promise him my firstborn.

Kettlebell beauty

Jon:
It's just this simple. Do kettlebells and look great! Strength and beauty in perfect harmony.

It rains in Barcelona too

Jon:
Eskrima practice was cancelled today so I had planned to go to the park and record a kettlebell juggling 101 film but since this is what our terrace is looking like today I'm staying indoors watching comedy (Lyoto Machida training with Steven Segal) and listening to an old re-discovered classic on Spotify: Queensrÿches Operation: mindcrime.
We have a class at 4 o'clock at the beach so I hope that it at least stops raining. It really does not matter though. We'll be there anyway - come rain or come shine.

Friends in Europe

Our friends and fellow RKCs from the cerification in May are doing well for themselves.

Alexey, the Big Bad Russian Bear is now running Red Star Kettlebell in Paris and is arranging a HKC-seminar there next year. Also, his youtube channel is a treasury of odd kettlebellclips. Have a look!


Markus (to the right) who is a professional parkourist is now also one of the guys behind CrossfitBern. We're trying to persuade him to come and visit us here in Barca. Before the summer he said he would and promised to teach us some wallruns. Do you think it can be done in a weekend?


Monika has always been doing extremely well and is extremely experienced in the field of fitness. She was travelling the world selling spinningcycles before I could walk goddamit. Her blog is a great read and it seems like she is opening her own gym in Gothenburg in December. Monika is great and is the training partner of my dreams. After my husband that is.

For six days you shall labour and do all your work

Anna:
So yesterday was rest day. (Well, if you disregard the two hours of ballet in the morning. Uhu, I know, I know. Ballet is NOT resting! I should know, just wrote a fuc*ing post on it the other day. But come on, cut me some slack here. Rome wasn't built in a day and even the sun has it's spots. Slowly but surely right?) And I was trying to do the things that I normally neglect when I'm running between classes, unpacking sweaty gear, packing clean ones, eating cottage cheese und so weiter. Like doing the laundry, read a book and scan my inbox for unreplied emails. But I got stuck in front of the lappie.

While importing some pics to the computer I found this pic of me and Lu Nagata from the her workshop during poleart.

Lu is a fantastic poledancer/dancer/performance artist and her workshop was the best poleworkshop I've been to. The tricks she taught us was things that I had never seen before and we had so much fun. If there's one studio in the world I'd like to visit it's hers. Have a look at her website and if you're to Tokyo, that's the place to go.

The second picture is from my visit to NYPD (New York Poledancing) in september. Here with instructor Bonnie who, during the warmup, had us do perhaps 500 situp variations. I could hardly stand up for tha class after that. Ha ha. The studio is, as you can see, absolutely amazing. When I was there we were dancing with skyscrapers in thunderstorm outside the studiowindow. When in NYC. Do visit. And if you meet Anna, the instructor and co-founder of USPDF, say hello from me.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy

Anna:
I'm not very good at resting. I do schedule my weeks with rest days. But as the day of no training comes I always get the urge to try just a feeew handstands, practice some l-sits or work on something that juuust came into my mind. Unfortunately my lack of discipline when it comes to laying low has already taken it's toll. The minor injuries and drawbacks I've had the past years are perhaps not unusual for someone with my workload, but I still consider them to be too many for a young girl like me and as I'm getting older it's probably not going to get better unless I learn to take it easy. However, I think I'm actually slowly learning to recognize the signs my body is sending me and when it's time to slow down.

A few days ago I was walking down the street feeling like a panther waiting for it's pray. I felt so strong, fast and explosive that my fingers were tingling. It felt as if all my senses were sharpened and I felt like sprinting down the narrow lane, dodging mopeds and garbagebags, at the speed of jaguar.

I didn't. Not only because I didn't want to scare our neighbours but because I'm starting to learn that when I get that feeling, that's when it's time to rest. Not to start working on your deadlift PR. I'm slowly realizing that when I keep pushing at that point, that's when my body is starting to break. It takes discipline to hold oneself back and it's not easy, for sure. But I think the Anna in 20 or even 10 years time will thank me for my maturity and wise actions. Ha ha.

There's a circus in town!

Jon:
Wednesday means class at Playa Barceloneta. After an astonishing autumn Barcelona showed herself from her more cranky side. Chilly and with rain in the air the boardwalk was calmer than usual and we both suspected that we would have to do a session for ourselves. But no. Instead we are blessed by the northern Gods with Oscar and Sofia. Oscar is a circus performer and Sofia a dancer and well.....what can you say? It's honestly not much of a challenge to teach people like that. They are motivated, knows what the hip is and what it means to have a straight back.
The more I teach the more I think that perhaps the most important thing that you can teach people is not how to do a swing, a squat, or a handstand. These skills are just tools for making other people as well as yourself learn about their/your own body. Teaching kettlebells we try to give people the tools to know and take care of their own house so to speak. Or as Kelly Starrett puts it "Every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves."
Training should be a bit like learning a new language: you can learn a few phrases here and there but to master it you have to know the basics. The more you learn however, the easier it gets.
Both Oscar and Sofia however are obviously multi lingual. After spending half an hour or so on the swing making it look nice and tidy we went on to the goblet squat, games standard push-ups, one arm and H2H swings and touched on the press. Very rapid progress indeed! Everything was finished off with a short workout and all of a sudden we had a couple of new friends in Barcelona. Hopefully in the future Oscar can teach us some handstand skills. Sort of loosing faith on that one lately. He obviously knows what he's doing though.

Barceloneta - Late saturday afternoon in November

Jon:

My beautiful wife showing off her strength with bottoms-up presses

Anything containing the words "idiot", "moron" or "useless"

Jon:
Today was the first day of trying to learn a new Eskrima system. Not that I know the old one (Warriors Eskrima) by now but when Enrique asked if I wanted to come to a new group an practice Balintawak the answer was a resounding "YES". To explain it very shortly the difference between the two seems to be that Warriors are more like fencing and Balintawak more like boxing with a stick. The movements in Balintawak are very basic end resemble boxing a lot. The most notable resemblance perhaps being the use of hip rotation.
"Quite similar to boxing. Very good. Then it should not pose much of a problem for our ageing hero", you might thing now. "After all, boxing might not be his foremost talent but at least he has tried it before on many occations and are well aquainted with its movements."
Well the trainig session went on somewhat like this:
Take a step back...no, with your left leg.....your other left.....you have to lift your feet.....no, the other feet.....no BACK!.....while still holding on to the stick......with you hand......your left hand......your other left hand....punch and rotate.....rotate.....not bend, rotate..etc, etc.
Good thing Enrique is a kind and patient teacher. I hope I have not discouraged him from teaching ever again but we will see in two weeks.

What it should look like

What I really looked like (reenactment)

Maybe this ballet thing is not such a good idea after all. I mean since I'm hardly able to punch a whole in the air with a stick. Or maybe, as the guy who thinks that the glass is half full would say: Since I'm hardly able to punch a hole in the air with a stick and makes it seem like I miracle that I haved learned both to write my name AND to tie my shoe laces, it might be a brilliant idea for me to take ballet classes. I might actually get better at......well, something.

Anyway. Despite my uselesness I always have a great time at Eskrima practice and I will get better - Insha'Allah. On saturday it's regular practice again.
We also started on week four of kettlebell muscle today. It should have been yesterday but both of us very kind of tired from our sunday house warming party so we postponed it. Week four is when the amount of sets doesen't increase anymore. Instead the rest period between sets decrease. A weekend of partying and not eating very well took its toll and made the presses really heavy today. I had to push press from set four I belive. It is obvious that I have to get back on my "minimum one fuet a day"-diet.

Fare forward, voyagers.

Jon:
Just watched the Pacquiao vs. Margarito fight. Whatcha gonna say? The guy is faster and more accurate than anyone else. I mean speed is one thing but balance and precision together with speed....well obviously it outsmarts size. At least in this case.
Really looking forward to GSP vs. Koscheck. Brain vs. ...... well, I don't know.
Anyway we had a good few days. Been doing KB-muscle and maybe really getting to reap the benefits now. Really tired though. Have had my first week in spanish class and even though it is not physical training it sort of gets to you.
There's not too much to say about my own training right now except that I promised - on my life (being drunk) - to start taking ballet classes from Annas ballet teacher. It's going very well for our students though. We have had quite a few new students since we started teaching at the beach and they are all excellent! It's a very different feel here compared to Sweden. People are not as "cool". They are generally a lot more interested an open minded. If me and Anna go down to the beach and start playing with the bells people get curious and after a while we are teaching them the basics of the deadlift, the swing etc. Some are better than other however. The other day we stopped to chat with a guy in the back alley just in front of our apartement. As Anna showed him the swing with the 12, the 11 year old little rascal and his equally rascallous younger sister started playing with my 16. After watching Anna display the swing they both executed more or less flawless swings themselves, without instruction and with something like half or a third of their bodyweight........kids, ah!
When I was about 11 years old and watched Fame on TV I felt "I really would like to do that, but I'm too old. It's too late." Since that it has been a feeling that had been with me. Not so strong that it has completely paralyzed me but it has always been there. I have never liked it though. In seventh grade our swedish teacher told the class the no one of us would ever write like Strindberg. I guess that was sort of a safe bet for her but it immediatly put a red blanket in front me. Of course she was right but I were not never comfortable writing "not as good as Strindberg".
However...passing 30 years by far the feeling of things being "too late" has wained. Probably because it really is too late but also because that "too late" has been redefined. The question now beeing: "Too late for what?"
We all know Mozart wrote his first classical piece at the age of four and that Eistein formulated then great theory of whatever when he was X years old. I am not Einstein or Mozart. I am not Nureyev, Coen, Ali, Strindberg, Hendrix or any of the other greats. Why should that bother me?
Being too late is always a measurment that dependens on the deeds of others. In my own life it is always possible to be right on time or perhaps even a little ahead of schedule.
I have four weeks left on my (absolute)-beginners class in spanish. After that I just might try a little ballet. After all I have wanted to do it since whenever. Until then I will try to get much stronger, a lot better at beating people with a stick and hopefully be able to say more than one word at the time in spanish.
And to finish: Gongrats to Numi for winning the swedish crossfit championships! You were truly made for this.

2010-11-12

Precisionism

Anna:
We are finally back on the internet and I just got back home from todays ballet class. Ballet, boxing, crossfit and kettlebells, naturally, have their similarities in the strive for perfect movement. Still, ballet is so different. It might be the most understated type of activity I've ever practiced.

Of course ballet has it's share of grand gestures and glam but what differentiates it from most other physical endeavours is that in ballet God is really, truly, profoundly in the details.
When you snatch a weight, throw a punch or swing a bell there's always some room for personal preferences and technique. Your feet can be more or less apart, the width of your grip can vary and if your shoulders aren't quite were they should be it's not the end of the world. If you box for instance, surely there will be a lot of technique drills but the primary focus will always be on the final movement. The punch, the jab or the press and the squat if you're lifting weights. And your deadlift still counts as a deadlift even if your back was slightly curved on the way up.

So where am I going with this?

In ballet the big movements are secondary. What really matters are the barely visible internal tensions: head high, shoulders down, arms slightly curved but not really curved, fingers not straight but not relaxed, ribcage in and down but torso up, buttocks tucked under but back straight, hips turned out, knees turned out, legs straightened, heel forward but toes back. And it's all these little details that make ballet ballet. Without this, a jetée is not a jetée, it's just a kick.

It is a if someone assembled all the akward movements there are and created a dogm for how to make them look natural but at the same time execute them in the most difficult manner possible. That means that even standing in first position, not moving a 1/16 of an inch is going to make you brake a sweat. You work like a bull to look like a sparrow.

Although the drills we did today are, seemingly, rather simple and not grand at all sweat was dripping from my nose and we're all shaking from exhaustion as we're leaving class. All from a few tendues, arabesques and rond de jambes (google them) at the bar.

Imagine if one had that kind of precision in a crossfit class. Guess you'd have a heart attack after your first set of push-ups. Anyway. Found this picture in an old but still valid book on beginners ballet technique. Enjoy. Tomorrow is contemporary with another set of principles altogether.

Pull-up bar premiere

Anna:
I'm aiming at doing three chins every time I walk through our front door. Grease the groove as they call it.

And also, the pole is in place now, pics to come soon.

Still offline - thank you for waiting

Home ain't home without a chins bar. Since yesterday our flat is officially a home. Now go to spotify and listen to 'home sweet home' by mötley crue.

Temporarily out of order

We have moved to our beautiful new flat and are currently without internet connection. Be patient, we'll be back on the web in no-time! Not to worry though, meanwhile we're doing Spetznast-pullups at the beach and kettlebell-muscle on the terrace. If you're in Barcelona on the 14th of November and would like to come to our housewarming party, send us an email! Especially our Iraqi reader!

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!

Guerilla marketing

Anna:
Me and the bells out on a advertising spree.



Also, completely off topic: When was the last time you listened to Pet Shop Boys? Might be high time to turn on Left To My Own Devices!

Playing around at playa barceloneta

You've been volleyed!

Anna:
Ever since we first started talking about moving to Barcelona I've had the dream that we would start playing beachvolleyball. A couple of days ago I talked Jon into buying us a ball. Here's some documentation from our first practice.







I reckon that in beachvolley one must be an extremely good team player and that one must never ever let oneself be annoyed with the partner if he or she makes a mistake. Guess things like that becomes extra important as there are only two of you in the team. Unfortunately I'm an impatient bitch so I guess we're not gonna be champions anytime soon but we had a lot of fun practicing.

This kind of non-quantifiable training is something I'm really embracing at the moment. Training can be so much more than counting reps, seconds or kilos and I think it would do many of us good to stop counting and start playing.

Lost in translation

Jon:
My spanish is far from sufficient so I use all the help I can get, i.e. translation programs and apps.
This is the result I got from trying to translate an e-mail from the gym where I practice Eskrima:

Bra

Det går bra Project Presentation, en version
om du Luce.
Och njuta av dagarna av semestern.
En princip skulle inte gå på lördag,
jag har saker att gå tungt lämnar mig,
gjorde detta är en tjänst Duran tonica och FN
gången som det har ändrats på grund
av en modalitet i Yawara och nu betala
för klasserna A Place To Go månatlig avbetalning.

I varje fall hoppas jag som ett tåg EL 11/06.

Got that!

Back in the days...

Jon:
Moving to a new city evokes memories of past relocations. In the beginning of the 90s I moved to Uppsala to study philosophy at the university. I had lifted weights prior to that and I had always been interested in martial arts so as soon as I had installed myself I went searching for a gym. After a few months living as a nomad in gym limbo I found what was to become my second home for a few years to come: Chikara. It was mainly a dojo with Karate and Thaiboxing classes and a very small weightlifting room. The place was hidden on the second floor in a back alley with the weightlifting room on the first floor. I signed upp for thaiboxing classes with usage of the weight room being included in the price.
The gym had quite a shady reputation it turned out as it previously been owned and ran by the infamous Uppsalamaffian. For me it was heaven though. I never became a great thaiboxer but I didn't suck either and I loved to spend time in the weightlifting room. It had a raw concrete floor with some rubber mats and instead of a platform there was a hole in the floor where you squatted and deadlifted (not that I ever deadlifted back then). The door was locked with a big padlock and the hole thing was so badly isolated that snow blew in during winter. It had a few barbells, benches and racks. A complete set of dumbells from 10 kg to 50 kg or so, a few machines, old bleached bodybuilding posters and a stereo. Most of the time I was completely alone there. I could play any music I liked on the stereo. Rollins Band, Ministry, Sick of it All and Sepultura were the usual choises.
The only other guy (I saw two girls there once, for one minute or so) that came there regulary was one of the owners of the gym called "Ryssen" (the Russian). I asked him once what his real name was and he just replied: "Nevermind. Just call me Ryssen. Everybody else does."
He was built like a refrigerator - short and wide - and used to workout in camoflage and boots. After a while he asked me if I wanted to train with him. Eleven o'clock monday to friday. We never talked much but it was great times. I got a key of my own an started to do two workouts a day if I didn't have thai practice also. Ate enormous amounts of oatmeal and eggs and was always on the lookout for cheap protein. Got bigger.
This is many years ago now and Chikara doesen't exist anymore. I am not even sure that gyms like Chikara exists in Sweden anymore. Since that time it has always been my ideal kind of gym. When I look for a new place to train I am always looking for that feeling. An Occam style gym with only the bare essentials where people come to to lift rather than something else. I miss the unpolished, rough edged kindness that let you do your thing without interference.

Kettlebells..monday...something

Jon:
Mondays are dedicated to Neupert's Kettlebell Muscle-program but having nothing better to do while Anna was at her dance class I just had to try some snatch test style snatching. First with 16 kg. Sort of lost track counting but did something like 80-100 easy so I progressed to 20 kg. The grip feels slightly different with the new bells. Less strenous on the hands but at the same time a more slippery grip. I love to use the competition bells for juggling but for hard core snatching I am longing for some Eleiko bells.
20 kg's didn't do too much damage either. Clocked 100 snatches just on the right side of 4 minutes without too much huffin' and puffin'. I think I'm going to see what I can do with double 20s.
After a few hours rest and a visit to Barcelonas excellent Apple Store it was time for Kettlebell Muscle. Anna has a few doubts that it is possible to build serious muscle with as little work as this program demands and myself.....well, I have already put my skinny legs on the line.
No matter what will happen in the coming 12 weeks, it feels great. It didn't happen today but we are going to make the KB-muscle days stretching days also. If I'm ever going to do a l-sit to handstad on the rings I will need a lot more flexibility.


.

Funicular fun

Spiderpig spiderpig

Fooling around down in the sand

Anna:
It's all fun and games down at the beach. Here my latest invention. And don't tell me it's been done before.

On poledancing, circus and contemporary dance

Anna:
Good day today. 4 1/2 hours of dancing in the morning. First basic technique class, after that contemporary and then finishing off with a choreography class. Going back to dancing feels fantastic. It's developing in so many ways. Both physically and artistically. And it's humbling as well. Feels like a very good thing to take a step back from the activities you know you're good at and go in to something where everyone else are better, more advanced and more experienced than you are. To leave the familiar behind and throw yourself into new environments is daunting, for sure, but how developing.

It's for that exact reason that I think that I'm not going to take the tissue & trapeeze classes at piccolocirkus that I went to try this wednesday. It was great fun, everybody was very nice, we climbed high, twined ourselves into the cloth and made spectacular poses and did some cool drops. I believe that all the other beginners who were there got just what they wanted and more, and as much as I would like to say that I loved it, I felt like I had done it before.

I'm sure circus training could improve my technical level of poledance. No doubt about it. But right now for me, (running the risk of upsetting my circus friends) it's all the same in a way. It's the same search for new poses, new tricks. It's the same kind of 'Tahdaaa!-look at what I can do' kind of poses and moves. It's just like gymnastics or a strongman show. You show people something that most people can't do and then you get a round of applause. Too much show and too little poetry.

Some people would say that it's only when you have an extremely high technical level and when you know all the difficult tricks in the book that you are able to create or perform poetry. They might be right in a way, but also completely wrong. To have the possibility to do whatever you want with your body doesn't necessary mean that you will use it in all ways possible. And also, if you apply that sinister and strict perspective it almost inevitably raises the question: 'When are we technically skilled enough to start to perform outside the box, and who is to make that desicicion?'

What I'm trying to say is that I'am never going to be a chinese gymnast and that life is too short to let oneself be held back by strict ideas of virtuosity. I could probably be a better poledancer by taking circusclasses but what I want is something else. I want to discover new movements on the pole. Not new poses. I want to explore the understated. Not the glam. I want to look interesting and I'm no longer interested in the pretty. So here I am, dancing, dancing, dancing trying to find new kinds of movement and new ways of expression, hoping to take a few steps closer towards poetry.

Zero gravity at the beach

walking in Barceloneta

Playa Catalunya - tuesday night