Saturday, September 28, 2013

Daily RAW: LCC Wrap-Up, Thoughts

Greetings RAW Warriors,

Just a quick post today on the ending of the Long Cycle Challenge for September.

Friday I was pretty well beat, and after looking at my log book, I had done a LCC workout for 10 out of 11 days, and the off day was a 5K race day, too.  My body basically said "take a break", so I did. I was at 4200 at the end of Thursday for total clean & jerks with the kettlebell.

Today was a finale to it all, as I got up to 200 reps and fell into a nice groove to get another 100 in and do a total of 300 straight with the 35# kettlebell, in 20 minutes time. 4500 reps total for the month of September and for the challenge.  I plan to take the last 2 days off here and rest up for a 'mega challenge' I am prepping for in October through December to finish out the year.

Overall, when I first started this challenge, the 20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest format was a good way to build into things.  It allowed me to rest between sets and get used to the repetitive actions.  After a few days of that, I decided to do it continuously, 5 reps per arm & switching each time. I averaged about 15 reps/minute, making it easy to figure out how long workouts would take if I kept up that rhythm. 150 would take 10 minutes, 200 about 13 & a half. 100 was just 6 and a half minutes.

I varied a bit here & there between 30, 35 and 40 pound kettlebells but overall, the 35# one was my staple.  Towards the end it started to feel lighter, but the volumes were up so I was focused on the volumes.

My total weight didn't change much, but I felt I dropped some fat and gained some upper body muscle in the process of it all.  A lot of cleans really works the biceps over time, plus the pressing of the Jerk action really gets the triceps too.  I didn't do it as an arm workout, it was a pretty good full body action with the lower body enabling everything else, the arms took over and did their work for the clean & jerk portion.  My abs & lower back had to continually flex & brace things for each rep, so they got targeted as well.

The big "what the heck" moment was in my running, as I had a race on the 21st and also a tag team race where I did 2, 1-mile runs in about 6 minutes each.  My 5K time was a 6:45 pace when I factored in my time and how short the course accidentally was: 18:30 for 2.74 miles is about a 6:45 minutes/mile pace. August's challenge was Cleans and doing my track workouts, so with just Long Cycles and a couple races this month, I was pretty impressed how well my running went.

I have always felt that Kettlebell training has been a secret weapon of mine and it has helped me improve and bounce back from injuries when they occur.

This next challenge is going to take 90 days to do, basically four, 3-week phases.  I am not sure how much I will share on the blog because I want to really see how well this challenge goes for me before I publish too much about it on the blog.

Overall, look for a Long Cycle Challenge guide to come out in the future, covering in detail how this last month went.

Until then, grab your copies of my other 2 KB challenges, "Just Swing It!" and "Just Clean It!" right here: http://tinyurl.com/rkofp or at the top of this blog's page with the links provided.

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Lift. Dominate. Repeat.
Rats Alley Barbell Club
Coach Rick Karboviak
http://occupyfirstplace.com

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