Saturday, December 26, 2009

36 Military Presses for my 36th!

Today is my 36th birthday.

Last year, I decided to start marking the day with a shirtless and in shorts kettlebell exercise, done outdoors, reps matching my age : ) For my 35th, I did 35 Snatches with a 24kg kettlebell in Kelowna, temperature -10C.

This year it was only -5C and I decided to do 36x 16kg Military Presses per arm.

Next year, I want to up the ante and do 37x 24kg Snatches per arm!

Here's the video:

Monday, December 21, 2009

Wing Tsun Chi-Sau Marathon!


Me and Master Ralph after the lesson.

On Friday December 18th, I went to my private lesson with Master Ralph Haenel of Wing Tsun Vancouver. I had been informed beforehand that I was to be part of a "warm-up" set of 6 lessons in preparation for Saturday's 14-hour Chi-Sau marathon.

Yes, that's right... a 14-hour Chi-Sau marathon!

Master Ralph wrote a great blog post about the marathon, AND how hard training of the basics is of the absolute importance, if real-world Wing Tsun skills are your goal.

The Tan-Sau of death and other secret techniques of Wing Tsun Kung Fu - part 2 of 2

Enjoy!

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

There's snow on the roof... and fire in the furnace!

You all know about the amazing 63 year-old, octuple-bypassed powerhouse named Irv, now I would like to introduce two other awesome dudes...

Comrade Brockster from the Dragondoor Forum and Russian Oleg Pronnikov, a tough 72 year-old European Kettlebell Sport Champion.

Brockster aka Brewster Righter is a 163lb, 73 year-old, hard-training Comrade from Long Island, New York. I first became aware of him via a funny online picture where he is posing with his wife and grandaughter in front of his house, kettlebells at his feet. I posted the link on the Dragondoor Forum and was surprised when Brewster turned out to be a member : )

Recently, he set a new AAU National Deadlift record of 358.2lbs in his age group.

Here's a video of his record-setting deadlift:




The next inspiring gentleman is 72 year-old European Sport Kettlebell Champion Oleg Pronnikov, who recently performed 249 16kg Snatches in 10 minutes. Oleg did not even start lifting kettlebells til after his 50th birthday!

Oleg on the competition kettlebell weights being made lighter for those over 70:

"They say now that they want those who are older than 70 years old, to lift a 12 kg kettlebell. I think that it is better to lift a pan in the kitchen than a 12 kg kettlebell. A 16kg is the Girevoy Sport weight.”

Here is a link where you can watch some of Oleg's championship performance!

I found out about Oleg at Caestus: The Extreme Girevoy Sport Records Blog. A fun site to visit as long as you don't mind terribly translated Russian : )

We can all only hope to be as awesome as Brockster and Oleg when we're in our 70s!
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