Andrew Malone(Flickr)
So, this blog is long overdue, as are all the things I want to share with you and are gathering dust (figuratively) in my Evernote notebooks.
Today, me and someone who’ll only be identified as ‘V’ picked up our 12 kg kettlebells, and we start our Kettlebell Challenge from tomorrow onwards.
What are Kettlebells, you ask? Good question. In the next few posts I’ll try to deconstruct the history and functional use of Kettlebells, and also try to explain why I’m featuring them on a Paleo/Primal blog.
We will be doing a thrice-a-week routine from Pavel’s Simple & Sinister book, a workout based only on the Kettlebell swing, & the Turkish get up.
What are these exercises, and what are Kettlebells? The next few posts will cover that in detail.
One surprising thing you’ll notice, is that we’re doing the exact same program, even though we have diametrically opposite goals. V wants to lose weight, and get to a lean muscular build, while I am already as lean as I can get, and simply want to put on as much muscle as is sustainable without too much effort. Shouldn’t we then be doing completely different training programmes, for our differing sets of goals? V should do a lot of cardio, and I should be focusing on bulking up, and then do a cycle of ‘cutting’?
Not necessarily. I don’t know where a lot of the crap about training comes from, but it simply doesn’t work. At the least, it is a waste of your limited resources of time and energy. You just need to do simple, basic exercises, and you should be seeing results. If you’re not, something is wrong with either your training, your diet or your recovery.
The reason magazines come up with these “workouts of the month” is because they need to sell magazines, and need content to fill up the page space. Hell, If the workouts really “worked” as advertised, you wouldn’t be needing new ones every month. 🙂
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. We both will also be getting lots of low intensity activity atleast thrice a week, and aiming for as much as possible. For V, that will be one hour walks. For me, that’ll be long hikes in the evenings. Luckily for me, I live in a place where I have access to the woods and gorgeous hiking trails, literally in my backyard.
Spending time in nature is one of the backbones of living a Primal life. Essentially, living primally will hopefully guide you towards the best health and fitness that your body and genetics can manage. Incidentally, do you know that you can actually switch on and off individual genes? Yup, you read that right. Switch on and off individual genes. So if you have heart disease, you should be asking what lifestyle triggers caused me to switch on the ‘heart disease gene’.
And this isn’t just la la land talk. There is hard evidence to back up these claims I’m making. Only thing is, this evidence takes a long time to seep its way into the mainstream.
By the way, don’t do cardio. It will kill you. Slowly. It will damage your heart, not protect it. Cardio doesn’t work, and it never has, that’s why it is so difficult to lose fat using cardio.
There are much easier and faster ways to lose all the extra fat. Hopefully you’ll stick around to read more of what I have to say.
Can’t wait? Want to read more? Sure! Go over to www.primalblueprint.com for more information than you’ll need in an entire lifetime.
Another amazing resource is www.robbwolf.com. Robb Wolf is arguably the spearhead of the modern Paleo movement which has spread throughout the world. I don’t agree with him about everything, (the guy does Crossfit, for God’s sake), but he has his heart (and brain) in the right place.
And yeah, go get some fresh air in nature.
Love,
Yash Chheda
Primal Flow Fitness 