Today‘s strength practise is a very simple one – To Lift a Thing. The thing in question being our newest Kettlebell, a 24KG one. The weight is still a bit too heavy for me at the moment to do swings with comfortably, plus yesterday was a long day of dance, so for today a warmup,… Read More Simplicity – The Deadlift

This, of course, goes for everything in life. One of the exercises shown in the Nerdfitness Article I linked to in last week’s Post features a rubber band. It is used to strengthen the extensors – so an anti-grip exercise, of sorts. This is great to do in the ‘rest’ time between your training sets of… Read More Use what you have

Grip strength. What’s it for? Well, everything, apparently – as it translates into full body strength and overall health. It also relates to gentleness. Check out this great article by Nerd Fitness on improving grip strength, wrist mobility and hand flexibility. Interestingly, and partially relatedly, check out this Post by Bulletproof Musician on a simple grip-related trick… Read More Getting a Grip

It’s the strong hand, not the weak one, that must learn to be gentle. Today was a day for gentleness. In all things practise, instead of an ‘all or nothing’ approach, sometimes the best way forward is to take a small (or considerable!) step back. To go deeper instead. In strength training for instance, ‘off… Read More A Gentle Approach

In the same vein as this week’s post on flexibility: Goal setting time! In 2018 I’ve re-picked up (literally) my Kettlebells for strength training. Nothing too crazy, just building up slowly by working steadily, and with plenty of breaks and rest. I notice that it makes me feel more balanced, and that it helps to keep… Read More Strength Goals for 2019

Happy Holidays – if you’re reading this on the 24-25th! This will be a shorter post today, a bit more of a training log than strength philosopy 🙂 A report back after last week’s Janda situp experiment: Sunday: 0 reps, 0 negs (but I gave it my all!) Monday: 0 reps (yet almost managed one)… Read More Gainz for Christmas

With any kind of progressive training, for strength or for other skills, it can be easy to forget that the magic really happens in between the practise sessions. And that the times where we struggle is where we learn/grow the most. The body (and mind) adapts after the training, to the stresses that the training… Read More The Invisible Work

I learned today – while skipping ropes – how much our state of mind really influences how we move. For the past few weeks I had noticed that I wasn’t able to keep my rope-skip rhythm as steady as I used to. During summer, after just a few weeks of practise, I was able to… Read More Untangling the Ropes

Resilience. One of my favourite expressions of (inner as well as outer) strength. According to the Oxford dictionary it has the following meanings: resilience /rɪˈzɪlɪəns/ noun The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity. We all have it. This tree has it.… Read More Resilience

This post is an ode to the Kettlebell, the portable iron gym. As posted yesterday, for the past year Pavel Tsatsouline’s excellent ‘Simple & Sinister’ Kettlebell workout book has been my go-to functional strength (and cardio!) workout method, combined with rope skipping. I was inspired to educate myself on Kettlebells after completing Monika Volkmars Dance Stronger program… Read More The Mighty Kettlebell