Fitness Blog

Marlaena and I went to see the new Cirque De Soleil show Kooza last weekend and it was fantastic! The show returns to Cirque De Soleil's circus traditions and combines acrobatic performance and the art of clowning. Kooza focuses a lot on human performance and showcases some incredible feats of strength, balance, flexibility and body control. 

The two contortionists that start the show were probably the most flexible humans that I have ever seen! These women bent and contorted their bodies in ways I didn't think possible. Their finishing move looked like they literally disconnected themselves at the waist, it was a bit scary to be honest! There was a double high wire act that was totally awesome and a guy who stacked multiple chairs on top of each other until he was about 50 feet up in the air and then did a perfect one arm hand stand on top of the entire stack!

The most amazing act of the night though was called the Wheel of Death. It was two guys in separate cages on a huge mechanical arm and they spun it around using their own momentum. It was absolutely amazing and the timing of these two guys was perfect! Below is a video clip of the performance if you want to check it out. 

I would recommend this show to any fan of Cirque De Soleil, of gymnastics, acrobatics or athletics in general. The acts were flawless and the performers made each task look effortless. I was totally impressed and will definitely see them again next time they come through Vancouver!

They're a little bit bigger than traditional medicine balls and a lot softer so you can throw them, slam them and toss them around with out having to worry too much about hurting anyone or damaging anything!

The Dynamax med balls vary from 4 to 20 lbs., they come in a variety of different colors and are all the same size. They're a perfect fit for the gym, at home, out in the park or where ever else you want to do any conditioning drills or training!

Marlaena and I were in Seattle last weekend for a workshop with Pavel Tsatsouline who is the founder of the RKC (Russian KettleBell Challenge) and the author of a ton of great training books. The workshop was hosted by the Kettlebility Studio and covered three of his body weight books - Super Joints, Bullet Proof Abs and the Naked Warrior.

The morning started off with Super Joints. We spent a few hours going over a ton of different joint mobility exercises, warm-up drills, dynamic and static stretching, contract and relax stretching and various breathing techniques. We spent a lot of time on the hips and were shown various ways to open up and find space in your hip joints so you can get better depth in your squat and deadlift. This part of the workshop was really beneficial for me because I've always had tight hips, tight hamstrings and lower back problems.

After the morning session we took a small break and then moved on to Bullet Proof Abs. This part of the workshop was also huge for me because a lot of time was spent on power breathing and exhalation and building abdominal pressure in your mid-section to make you more stable and stronger in your lifts. This is something that I've always had difficulty with and I was glad to finally learn how to "breath behind the shield!" After the breathing techniques Pavel showed us a variety of horrendous ab and oblique exercises that made me sore for days!

The last part of the workshop focused on the Naked Warrior which covers the one arm push-up and the pistol squat. Pavel believes that these are two of the toughest body weight exercises that you can do and if you can master them both, you are well on your way to being a fitness rock star! I was really looking forward to this portion of the workshop because I have been working on my one arm push-up and my pistol squat for the past few months. I picked up a lot of great tips and was able to do my first pistol squat with my left leg (using a kettlebell as a counter weight) and managed to bust off a few one arm push-ups off the floor using each arm. (Marlaena did pistols on both legs but had to stick to normal push-ups!)

Overall the workshop was a great experience. It was awesome to meet Pavel in person and have the opportunity to listen to him explain and demonstrate so many different exercises and drills. I'm happy that I bought and read all three books before hand too because there was so much information to take in. And I'm really glad that Marlaena took a ton of notes because by the end of the day I had already forgotten everything we had worked on that morning! 

I'll be filming some of these stretches and hip mobility drills in the next few weeks and will add them to the site in one of the next updates!

                                                                          

With a population well over a billion people I know China has a much bigger gene pool to draw from but this is getting a bit ridiculous!

Have a look at this video that was posted up on CrossFit Vancouver the other day. It's of an 8 year old chinese boy doing a very solid 75 kg. clean and jerk. Yes, I said eight years old...  

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