Monday's Workout: "Jackie"

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon mashed into an uncomfortable chair in an auditorium, watching my six-year-old (and dozens of others) perform at his martial arts studio's annual black belt show. My kid was onstage for two short segments, each lasting about a minute. Those couple of minutes were fantastic; I love watching my little man confidently punch and kick his way across a stage. But for the remaining 118 minutes of the kung fu recital, my mind was focused on the fact that the ache in my injured lower back was worsening. The longer I was scrunched in that chair (with my three-year-old squirming on my lap), the more miserable I got.

Interestingly, my back didn't feel better until 5 a.m. this morning, when I staggered into the gym, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and started foam-rollering the hell out of my back muscles. Finally, I felt the tension ease, and after joining the rest of the class for a low-impact warm-up (no awkward cartwheels today!), my back started to feel a whole lot looser.

Strength Skill:

• Turkish Get-Ups (1-2-3-1-2-3)

No point in (further) destroying myself today. I stuck with a 1 pood kettlebell for my TGUs. They felt pretty solid, and even with a few minutes of rest between sets, I finished relatively quickly.

Metcon:

"Jackie" - For time:

• Row 1,000 meters
• 50 barbell thrusters (45lbs / 35lbs)
• 30 pull-ups

I've done Jackie twice before, but the last time was over a year ago, and frankly, I have no recollection of these previous attempts. Tim asked me my PR on Jackie, and I shrugged.

This didn't look too bad, I thought as I scrutinized the whiteboard. The rowing would be miserable, but if I paced myself, I'd be fine. Doing thrusters with an empty bar seemed easy enough. And pull-ups are fun! If I pulled a leisurely 4-minute 1K row, I figured I'd need just another 4 minutes -- tops! -- to get through the light thrusters and pull-ups.

I was wrong. As usual. The only one of us at 5 a.m. who finished in less than 8 minutes was the Terminator (of course).

If I'd consulted my blog archives (see? they come in handy!), I would have seen that in July of last year, I finished Jackie in 10:03, and in September, I finished in 9:28. And perhaps I would have remembered how my legs turned to jelly right after stumbling off the erg, and how even 45-pound thrusters feel horrible when my thighs are on fire. Or, for that matter, how the thrusters were more than enough to fry my arms and make 30 unbroken pull-ups nothing more than a pipe dream.

On the plus side:

• I managed a new PR (I finished in 9:07 as RXed), and
• During the workout -- and for about two hours afterwards -- my back felt awesome. I didn't even need to spray Old School Horse Rub on it.

Sadly, once I came home and got the kids dressed, fed, and off to school, my back turned back into a pumpkin and started aching again.

Stone Lock Training

Once upon a time in ancient China, a creative martial artist spied an enormous padlock made of stone and decided to use it as a training tool. With a built-in handle, these heavy locks could be used for lifting, swinging, throwing -- and they were cheap and available everywhere there was a set of big-ass doors that needed to be secured.

It didn't take long before the famous monks of the Shaolin Temple began using these shi shuo (石锁) ("stone locks") to hone their strength and skills, and since then, generations have trained with them.

The practice of using these padlocks as workout equipment eventually made its way to Okinawa, where the locks were called ishi-sashi ("awesome stone locks") and used as Karate training tools. Today, in Asia, you can still find practitioners honing their stone lock skills and showing off amazing feats of strength and coordination in competitions and demonstrations.

Shi shuo aren't nearly as popular or ubiquitous as kettlebells -- yet. But aside from the difference in shapes, they're very, very similar. From a real-world, practical standpoint, there's no difference between the two: Both are heavy weights with an integrated lateral grip that's elevated above the weight's center of gravity. I can't think of any kettlebell exercises that you can't also perform with a stone lock. And the majority of stone padlocks vary in weight from about ten to thirty-five kilograms, which is about the same for most kettlebells.



There is, however, one key element to stone lock training that you don’t see much of in kettlebell work (with few exceptions): THROWING.

One book on Shaolin training methods explains that you should “[t]ry to achieve the stone padlock to fly up and rotate round its axis in the air, making…two or three revolutions, then catch it.” Eventually, you’ll be “able to control the number of revolutions [and] increase or decrease their number (revolutions) by will.”

This stuff looks insane.

If you're in the market for something a little different, and you've always wanted to toss around a big heavy rock with a handle, you may want to buy yourself a set of stone locks. Who knows? With any luck, maybe you'll be the Pavel of shi shuo.

The Flying Nuns

Do not mess with nuns. They will beat you down.

[Source]

I Miss Pat Morita

So I guess they're remaking "The Karate Kid", with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith playing the Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio roles. And from the looks of this trailer, the movie's set in China, the ancient land of mean-eyed wushu-trained boys and demure violin-playing girls. During the course of the flick, Jackie Chan (sporting a moustache wispier than Mariah Carey's in "Precious") sagely teaches Jaden Smith how to be a kick-ass kung fu fighter, in part by instructing him to "JACK IT OFF" or something like that. (I guess "wax on, wax off" wasn't suggestive enough.)

But wait a second: This remake features a Chinese kung fu master teaching kung fu in China. There's no karate in this film -- not even the fake kind that Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel-san. So why is this movie still called "The Karate Kid"? Why not "The Kung Fu Kid" or "Will Smith's Kid" or "Jack It Off"?

Oh, right -- for a moment, I forgot that in Hollywood, all Asians (and their respective forms of native martial arts) are totally interchangeable.