what you know and what you don't

the more I learn the more I want to learn, I have a real thirst for knowledge, the only problem is there never seems to be an ending point. In the last several years i've continued to pursue more information, sometimes more than I can possibly assimilate and apply in a single shot. And each time I start down a new avenue I end up looking at all sorts of random studies and websites. since i'm in a massage therapy program I've been looking at a lot of different things. most recently these two sites....http://www.massagetherapy.com/articles/index.php/article_id/236 and http://biotensegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=4&Itemid=29 (you'll have to forgive me again for some reason when I do this on Jes's mac the embed link icon doesn't show up and I'm a little lazy to embed it myself...sorry) the first article covers some of the science of how massage works with respect to piezoelectricity. The second lists a bunch of papers from Dr. Levin I just kept reading so I didn't list one article but a page with a bunch. One of the ones I really liked was about the scapula as a sesamoid bone. It brings up how fascia and it's role makes the concept of leverage and fulcrums inadequate when looking at function. It also touches on how serratus anterior disfunction may be related to breathing. for some reason I seem to be seeing a lot of material in reference to breathing recently, I'm not really looking for it but it keeps showing up. I think that the role of breathing has been downplayed or glanced over in a lot of areas well that and vision but that comes more from my experience with Z and s-phase, my interest in breathing comes more from my experience with CST and now with my current recovery. As I've read more about physical culture, breathing was frequently focused, and although my time with the RKC concepts bring up some topics related to breathing i.e. Naked Warrior and Power to the People, mention ways to amplify strength and improve safety with breath, the depth of understanding and application haven't been quite like I'd prefer.

Reading this material makes me think how much further I have to go. It's been a little while that I've actually had to read something a couple of times to really get what the author was talking about. I'm really enjoying being back in a school setting, it's really getting my mind in the mode of massive absorption. I figure I'll keep taking in information and eventually I have the time to really play with it.

On some other notes todays workout has been neural warmup variations about 4-5 times and today I did some rowing on a Concept 2 rower. my previous times have been pretty good, I've done 500m in 1min27 and 1000m in under 3mins. which regardless of age and weight would put me right at the top 50 in the world if I looked at the site right, I never really trained much at rowing, I think that my climbing and kettlebell work helped alot. Today i did 500 meters in about 2 minutes, nothing spectacular by any stretch but it was great to get in some other activity. We'll see how it goes.

another day in....

Still doing snatches with 8kg today I did 20/20, 20/20. I've cut out the back pressure/diaphragmatic holds as a separate activity. Instead I've started focusing on a deep inhale at the top of the snatch. It really adds to the amount of 'smooth' extension I can achieve. I think that my form may actually not been as crisp as it should have been. The weight was light and because of it I think I may have been going lordotic without fully realizing it. So with the deep diaphragmatic breath and just enough glute tension I was able to take care of it, and it was a different feeling all together. Thats the thing with all of the Z concepts, close is good, but precise is better, and as long as your willing to keep sticking to it the precision gets 'easier'. Not so much to do but at least to be aware of it. As I do more with the breathing, I'll post more, it's a new avenue for me but I think there's a lot to gain from it.

so far so good

I've gotten in another session, i'd call it a workout but it's not so much work as it is a day to day test. I'm going to keep using the snatch for a while. I really like how i really open up with them, I'm not getting any pain in my abdomen and the regular pain I've been having in my lumbar area has been significantly better for the last few days. After my brief session on thursday, I felt fine during, immediately after, and for a while after that. Then I started experiencing some discomfort in my chest, if I raised my arm into flexion it got worse and as I raised it it felt like something was pulling and grabbing from the inside. So I held some pressure on a section of my chest to keep the fascia still and then if I raised my arm back into flexion there was no pain. So I did some overhead arm circles and a few other mobility drills with my arm overhead all while maintaining pressure onto my chest. Since then no more problems and I got in the following:
snatches 15/15, 15/15 8kg
diaphragmatic breathing 3 10second holds 3 times

Also Yesterday Jes and I taught a kettlebell workshop down in fayetteville. This was the first one that we have done together. It was a lot of fun working together and the workshop went really well. I did a bunch of talking since I'm still a while off from being back to normal which means Jes did a lot of demonstrating, most of the time with the 24kg. She's an excellent instructor. We had a good crew of people that did an excellent job working and learning. We had the request to come back in another 6-8 weeks depending on schedules so that should be a lot of fun.

All in all I look to be having a pretty good start back. I have a lot of tools at my disposal and access to some great minds pick. I can see being back to where I left off but better, I'll have more balance within my body and more knowledge to decrease some issues in the future. I'm going to progress slowly to do what I can to make this more likely to turn out as a stumble rather than a big fall.

Starting back...

This has been tough, I haven't really been able to actually do much more than just some basic R and I phase work, no exercise to really speak of. I know that some others, like geoff, call mobility work strength training and I agree but there is more to it than that personally I like to move more than just my body, I like to push forward and to feel systemically like i've done something not just neurologically. The circular strength training system refers to 3 wings, you have open and closed chain mobility, bodyweight movement through all degrees of freedom, and strength training, they talk about inner bag, outer bag, and double bag. All I've been able to do is focus on the mobility and for a while it wasn't much mobility because frankly I was scared of doing more damage, just because I could do something didn't mean I wasn't compensating and I had no idea what the ramifications would be. So this left me with just having to wait and see, I had intended to wait until the Z-assessment had my gait back to normal before I planned on doing any real activity. This sounded great in theory but I got to the point where I 'had' to move, so I did some snatches and swings with a 12lb kettlebell and then I played the waiting game, was three sets of 10 too much....turned out it wasn't and in fact my movement felt much better. After talking with geoff I realize that I had lost the ability to breathe diaphragmatically. So I've added work on that in too, in a grease the groove fashion. On the whole I'm feeling much better. Unfortunately I've lost about 12lbs some of it muscle but most of it fat. Body fat was at about 5% when I checked this last time. So for now the plan is a basic progressive overload working back up to where I left off, I'm not really going to worry too much about cycling the weights instead I plan on focusing on my RPE and RT. I have enough outside stress of working full time and going to school fulltime and helping plan a wedding among other things to really be able to focus on numbers and lbs. So today's workout is:
superset
3 sets of snatches 10/10 8kg and
back pressure crunch for 10 sec

nothing fancy, nothing tough, right now I'm focusing on making sure my progress is forward and safe, the same I'd do for any of my clients.

we are never balanced, we are always balancing

This is a silhouette of a slackliner. I was originally introduced to slacklining through climbing over a decade ago. Slacklining is stringing a lenght of tubular webbing between two points tightly. You then walk across it like a tight rope. The big difference is it moves a lot, as you move forward, the webbing bows down stretching slightly, it also can move side to side. Dealing with the degrees of freedom that the slackline creates is an incredible challenge to balance and a heck of a lot of fun. Without getting too deep the comment has been made that slacklining parallels life. The line is still until you engage it, if you can find your center you can move smooth between two points, but if you shift too much or too quickly, it becomes difficult to return to a stable center.

I started thinking about slackling after rereading through my Circular Strength Training Instructor manual. Over the last couple of years, I've amassed quite a few manuals from all the certifications and workshops I've gone through. I've done two levels of the RKC and assisted once, I've done CST (as mentioned earlier), three levels of zhealth with a fourth on the way, plus all the undergrad and graduate courses. I feel lucky to have been able to get a lot of use and tons of information from everything I've done but with all the information I've accumulated I have yet to fully assimilate it all. It will be some time before I'm able to do that. At some point in the near future I plan on outline some of the benefits I feel I've gained by going through those different systems. Every so often I like to reread the manuals to refresh and renew. Today I picked up CST and started going through it and came across quote found in this post's title. It really resonated with me today. Everything we do provides some sort of disruption to our equilibrium, the body may strive to maintain homeostasis but very little if anything in life is static. Whether it's balancing work and family, exercise and restoration, calories in versus calories out, the goals of tomorrow versus the details of the past. Change may be inevitable but it's the balance in life we create that dictates how well we can guide the changes that occur. If we swing too far one way we must swing back eventually, it's the choices that we make that determine whether the return will be voluntary or not. Look at what your goals are but always remember there's going to be some tradeoffs. The goals may have your focus but blinders only really work well for horses and even that's temporary.

posted some scrollwork on my other blog

you can check it out over at mothwork.blogspot.com or just go to my links. That blog will rarely if ever have much writing or ranting or rambling. It will focus on anything to do with the hands.