Reset

Lean, solid dogs, it’s been entirely too long. I’ve missed you! Since I last posted, I went “operational” on the county Search & Rescue team and started climbing a steep learning curve in any number of training courses–K9 search operations, swift water rescue, rope rescue, emergency medical response–and a handful of real searches.

Not easy! Not since the high school cafeteria have I felt so out of my depth. But as Joe Rogan points out, it’s good to go well outside your comfort zone, do things that you suck at, get humbled, and get better. On that score, this has been a valuable period.

But I’ve been sitting on my butt a lot, nursing some accumulated injuries, getting stiff and lethargic and fat.

At times like this, I go back to the work of Dan John, who’s a giant on a par with Clarence Bass. Both men have changed the way health & fitness nuts train and made themselves living libraries of decades of theoretical and practical research. Dan always takes me back to fundamental movements and attributes, which is exactly what I need right now. Specifically, it’s time to take care of mobility and de-blubbering.

To let my injuries heal, I’ve needed to reacquaint myself with beginner-level “patterning” movements, movement quality, light weights (16kg, 20kg), and low speeds.

And I’ve revived my custom of fasted jogging at first light down to the creek for a polar bear swim, with some bonuses along the way like bear walks and crab walks (all directions), pushups, and sideways and backwards running. In the orchards nearby there are some old stumps and branches that lend themselves to carrying and waiter-walking too. (Today’s trick: walking bottoms-up presses with part of a dead tree limb.) I’m not trying hard on these jogs, just having some fun. These are not even workouts, just jolly romps to play around in fresh, cold air and water.

Later in the morning or afternoon, I’ve taken a page from Dan’s book Intervention and done a series of simple stability and mobility exercises with sets of light kettlebell swings sandwiched in between to get the heart rate up.

So today’s session looked like this, doing 10 or 15 swings before each item and each switch from left to right side:

• waiter walk (L & R)
• walking bottoms-up press (L&R)
• goblet squat
• hip flexor stretch (L & R)
• windmill stretch (L & R)
• goblet squat again
• hip flexor stretch again (L & R)
• windmill stretch again (L & R)
• wrist stretches
• pigeon pose (L&R)
• lion pose
• pushups with a lot of scapular movement and serratus activation
• downward dog
• dolphin pose
• superman pose

That got me 300 swings, and that was quite enough, thank you!

When we return, some reflections on snow camping in the mountains.