In February 2011, Dallas wrote an article for Performance Menu, the “journal of nutrition and athletic excellence” published each month by Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics.  The article focused on the impact of sleep (or lack thereof) on your health and athletic performance.

Today, thanks to the generosity of Catalyst Athletics, today we are offering Dallas’ article for free – available to those without a subscription to PMenu. (Although if you don’t yet have a subscription, we can’t help but wonder why. Your health, performance and taste buds would all benefit from PMenu’s high caliber monthly offerings, and who doesn’t like the instant gratification of an on-line publication? The best part? You can subscribe for the whole year for only $30. Seriously – go do it.  We’ll wait.)

Here’s a preview from Dallas’ article.

Sleep: An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid

We all know we need sleep, and most of us would admit that we probably need more. Unfortunately, that knowledge often isn’t enough to compel us to take action to improve our sleep habits (or lack thereof). In many Western societies, the hard-charging, go-getting executive takes pride in sleeping less than his or her competitors, purportedly “getting more done” in any given day. (From a raw productivity perspective, that may be true, though research suggests that being chronically sleep deprived significantly impedes psychomotor function, memory retrieval, and… work productivity. So spending more hours getting stuff done – at the expense of sleep – makes you get less done in any given hour. Ah, the irony.)

In the realm of athletics, sleep seems to be the red-headed stepchild: clumsily acknowledged, generally overlooked, yet permanently part of the family. To the detriment of our health and performance, we often don’t give sleep proper priority. I think it’s high time that we help sleep come in from the cold.

Download the full PDF

You can download the full Performance Menu PDF here.

And as you couldn’t comment or post questions on the original article in PMenu, we’ll host them here – so feel free to post your thoughts below.

Enjoy – and tuck yourself in a little early tonight, okay?

A special guest post by Ben Abruzzo, owner of CrossFit Albuquerque and a Whole9 Nutrition Partner

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations.  We fall to the level of our training.”  CrossFit Albuquerque

The Question comes in many forms.  It is always different, yet universally the same.  The question is also often not very important, because the person asking the question need not pose the question at all.

The question could be:

“Why am I not getting stronger?”

“Why am I not losing weight?”

“How come I can’t do 20 kipping pullups?”

“Why are my row times not getting faster?”

“What can I do to back squat 500lbs?”

“How can I snatch my body weight?”

You get the idea.

While these are not bad questions in and of themselves, they pose a problem when taken out of the context of our lives – and when the commitment level of the person asking the question is, in fact, questionable.

Context Matters

Let’s take context first.  Our goals must be taken in context within the framework of our lives, and must be set in a reality that is attainable for us.  If we work out three days a week, eat crappy food and make our living doing something other than lifting weights, then a 500lb back squat does not really fit within the context of our lives.  If, on the other hand, we are a professional athlete, where being strong and powerful are our full-time jobs, then the goal and the question start to make more sense.  (In another example, if your life allows you to only run twice a week, is it really feasible to be the fastest runner in your next race?)

The point here is that we all have goals and quests and things that we want, but it is only a real goal (and not merely a dream) if it fits within the context of your life.  And if that basic fact doesn’t make you happy, then change an aspect of your life to make it fit.

Commitment

The more important issue is the issue of commitment.  What I am talking about here is the issue of commitment to plan.  To the everyday.  To the things that are easily controllable.  Because if you can’t commit to that, then super duper programming and nifty movements in the gym will not answer your question. 

What this takes is a bit of self introspection.  Are you really giving it your all in every training session?  When the workout calls for full effort, are you well and truly spent?  When we lift heavy, is it really heavy or are you just running through the motions?  Are you fueling your body with clean, whole foods?  Do you even know what foods you should be eating?  Have you asked?  If you have asked, did you give it an honest effort for an entire month?  Do you get enough sleep every night?  Do you recover as hard as you train? Do you try to mitigate stress or just add to your own stress?  This is what is really important.

If taking a chalk bath in the middle of a workout is your secret way of resting and diminishing the pain, then you might want to address that instead of looking for reasons why you are a special butterfly and the workouts “aren’t working for you.” If you follow up your workout with a bowl of ice cream or a Starbucks muffin, then you might want to examine your diet as a reason for lack of fat loss.  If you haven’t invested the time to gain enough strength to do one strict pull-up, then chasing dozens of kipping pull-ups misses the point entirely.

THE Question

Obviously, I sound like a jerk here – and I’m fine with that.  I’m fine with it, because I care about you and your goals and I want you to succeed.  That being said, I only care as much as you care.   If you can’t fix the stuff that takes some commitment but little else, then I can’t go much further.

So, read this, then ask yourself THE question:  “Am I doing enough with what I have?”  If the answer is no, then get after it before you begin asking for more.  If the answer is yes, then my door is open, and you can ask away.

Ben Abruzzo is a coach and co-owner of CrossFit Albuquerque, in Albuquerque, NM. Ben has spent most of his life in the mountains of New Mexico running, skiing and climbing. His focus and passion is the development of sport-specific performance.

For more information about CrossFit Albuquerque’s fitness, performance and nutrition offerings, email info@crossfitalbuquerque.com.

CON·TEXT
noun /ˈkänˌtekst/
The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

My Context Is Not Your Context

Definition aside, in simple terms, “context” means the general story of your life, past and present – everything that makes up your big-picture health and fitness.  A good place to start evaluating your own context is our 9 Factors – but most folks are already savvy to the fact that things like sleep, training and stress all play a major role in their individual health status.

What is often overlooked is that there are additional variables like age, health history, and genetics that also contribute to your individual context.  But unlike diet, sleep and training, many of those “invisible” factors are completely outside of your control.  And while it may be all too easy to ignore those factors or pretend they don’t impact your health, you’ll do so to your own detriment.

Age

You’re only as old as you feel, right?  In a way, that’s absolutely true.  But when it comes to things like recovery from exercise, metabolism and sleep, age plays an important role.  You may be in the best shape of your life, but some studies say that the older you get, the more likely you are to experience problems related to recovering from exercise.  While that conclusion is highly individual (and not necessarily an inevitability of aging), experts agree that at the very least, you should change the intensity, volume and frequency of training as you age.

In addition, you may be back to your high school weight, but your body isn’t as good at working through some metabolic processes as it used to be.  And you may have blackout curtains and turn in at 9 AM, but the older we get, the less likely we are to sleep as well as we used to.  Whether we like it or not, our age (and the aging process) is a factor to our big-picture health and fitness.

Health History

We’ve heard hundreds of transformation stories from Whole30 participants, some of whom admitted to having poor health habits in earlier years.  Now, as they string together a year or two of health eating, exercise, sleep and stress management, they picture those years behind them.  Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

A history that includes metabolic derangement and weight gain (especially the yo-yo variety), presents major challenges to your return to a healthy weight and metabolism.  In fact, your health history dictates to a large degree how hard you’ll have to work to achieve your new health and fitness goals – and you may find some of those goals (particularly regarding weight loss) are simply unattainable, given what your body has been through in the past.  While it’s unfortunate that you’d have to pay for past sins today, when you’re working so hard to do everything right, your health history is an unavoidable part of your current context.

Genetics

While many folks place too much emphasis on genetics (“I’m bound to be diabetic – it’s in my genes”), you’d be mistaken not to take that into account at all.  While epigenetics (the pattern of gene expression as influenced by environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition) has far more impact on how you look, feel and live, you can’t discount that your genes, race and ethnicity play a role in your health status.  If diabetes, addiction, breast cancer or other conditions “run in the family”, consider your margin of error that much skinnier.  It would be smart to pay attention to your genetic predispositions, and factor them in as part of your context.

It’s Not a Life Sentence

Of course, just because we age, have a history of yo-yo dieting or come from a family of diabetics doesn’t mean we are permanently bound by these factors.  (Heck, just look at Art Devany – he’s healthier and more vibrant than most people half his age.) How you approach your current diet, exercise regimen, sleep schedule and stress management have an enormous impact.  The take-away is this:  by factoring in your individual context – both those factors you control and those you don’t – you’ll be better equipped to make an effective plan to help you achieve your goals.

As we move forward into focusing more on the big picture of health, fitness and quality of life, you’ll continue to hear the refrain “context matters.”  We’re not trying to brainwash you, we promise – but we hope this discussion (and the broader health-centered discussions to come) will prompt you to thoughtfully evaluate your own context, and better help you set reasonable expectations for yourself, and continue to move you forward in your pursuit of optimal health.

We “zoomed in” on nutrition to meet a need in the community for practical application strategies of various dietary concepts – and we were not alone.  Over the last few years as the Paleo/ancestral health movement has grown, we’ve seen hundreds of new Paleo blogs, recipe sites and communities created for the exclusive purpose of focusing on nutrition.  But now, we see a new need within our community – and it’s time for us to take a step back and remind our readers that health is a multifaceted concept.  Nutrition is, of course, a  foundational piece of any good health and fitness program – but it most certainly is not the only piece.

Frank Forencich made an astute observation about this same phenomenon in The State of the Meme, saying, “The problem with this (nutrition-focused) variation (of Paleo) is that it’s a fragment of a much larger story. And because it’s a fragment, it tends to get pigeon-holed with every other diet meme out there. This brings Paleo down to the level of pop health, where it loses its meaning and its power.”  He goes on to add that “Paleo” is so much more than either ancestral nutrition or ancestral movement patterns – and we dig his perspective.

Context Matters

So now, for us, it’s time to zoom back out. Of course, we’re not abandoning nutrition as the foundational factor of a healthy life. But our readers need to hear more about The Big Picture. We interact with thousands of people a month via email, workshops, Facebook, and Twitter, and what we’ve realized is that many folks have drilled so far down into nutrition that they can no longer see the big picture at all. 

People ask us about the lectins in tree nuts, the fructose content of half a pear, or whether it’s okay to eat the deer they shot if the deer may have been feeding on GMO corn. (True story.)  And in many of these instances, what we want to say is,  “It really doesn’t matter, since you’re only sleeping 5 hours a night and I can smell the cortisol on you from across the street.” So we encourage you to pull back a bit, do a little introspection, and try to see beyond any one factor (specifically, nutrition) to view the reality of your big-picture health and fitness situation.  After all, self-analysis is nearly as critical to genuine progress as dissent (but that’s a topic for another day).

Analyze This

We’re calling this graphical representation of an individual’s overall health “The Whole9 Health Equation” (at least until we have a stroke of genius and come up with something clever-er). Yes, it is simplified – Dallas doesn’t like complex math equations. Yes, there are important factors (such as age and quality social interaction) that are not factored in here. No, we cannot quantify this for you personally, as (again), context matters. Nonetheless, let’s tackle this thing.

We think of each individual’s health status like a “bank account”, to and from which you make deposits and withdrawals.  Like a bank account, your Health Balance is a product of Credits minus Debits. If you make more frequent (or larger) deposits than withdrawals, you accumulate “Health Wealth”.  And, hopefully not to take this analogy too far, that Wealth pays dividends down the road.  Conversely, if you overextend your resources (withdrawing more than you’re depositing), you’ll find yourself in the red – “Health Debt”.  Think about overdrafting your bank account – you can continue spending for a while, but at some point, you simply can’t spend any more, because there’s nothing left in the bank. (Needless to say, that scenario stinks.)   Are you with us so far?  Good.  Now here’s where we start talking about specific factors.

Recovery = Nutrition + Sleep + Specific Recovery Practices

Your diet, sleep and general recovery habits are all a part of “General Recovery” (health deposits or credits).

Nutrition is the biggest potential credit. That’s why we call it “foundational”. Eating adequate calories from nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory foods on a daily basis will deposit huge credits into your health balance.  But your Nutrition factor can also be a negative integer, a debit. In other words, eating unhealthy foodstuffs can actually cost you – big. (Think obesity and chronic disease.)

Sleep matters. We make ours a priority – above exercise, reading, socialization, or even housekeeping. Dallas has written about this in Performance Menu, and we continue to emphasize this issue in our workshops and with consulting clients.  Nine hours of sleep per night equals big deposits.  Chronically under-slept?  Equally large withdrawals.  Sometimes, prioritizing sleep requires some radical revisions to one’s life. Pay now, or pay later.

Specific Recovery Practices include ice baths, contrast showers, specific mobility work (including foam rolling, lacrosse ball work or self-myofascial release), stretching, yoga, massage and other manual therapies, meditation, recovery (i.e. easy) training sessions, acupuncture, sex, napping, etc.  Your commitment to Specific Recovery Practices, to a large degree, dictates how quickly and thoroughly you recover from training, and ultimately can determine whether your training is productive or simply destructive.

In summary, sub-par Nutrition, Sleep, and Specific Recovery Practices have the potential to massively impact your Health.  (Duh.)  How rapidly this occurs partly depends on how fast you’re “spending” those resources with Physical Stress (PhysStress) and Psychological Stress (PsychStress).

Total Stress = Physical Stress + Psychological Stress

Physical Stress (PhysStress), for most of us, is structured exercise or participation in an actual sport. For some, working a manual labor or highly physical job (construction, firefighting, etc.) would also qualify as physical stress.  But for folks whose primary physical effort is deliberate exercise, there are several factors that determine the amount of PhyStress: intensity, frequency, and volume.  

Intensity refers to how hard the activity feels to you, and how hard your heart is working.  Frequency is how often you are experiencing this physical stress – twice a day, three times a week, etc.  Volume means the amount of work you complete in each training session – whether you lift a particular weight ten times during your session, or one hundred times.

Each of these factors work together to determine physical stress – notice they are all multiplied in the equation. That means in increase in one has the potential to dramatically affect the total of your PhysStress.  You can do short-ish high intensity stuff sometimes, or long and hard stuff occasionally, or long, low intensity activity daily – but not daily high intensity training, or large volumes of moderate intensity training, or (god forbid) both.  Unless you’re a professional athlete, of course, in which case you value performance over health. Most of us don’t fall into this category.

Psychological Stress (PsychStress) can come from a variety of sources, and can be pretty insidious. It could be job-related stress, family/marital stress, anxiety and phobias, unresolved childhood trauma, low self-esteem, guilt, etc. This stuff runs deep. But if you carry things (i.e. “baggage”), it costs – daily, monthly, and annually. The kicker here is that a complete lack of PsychStress doesn’t make a very big deposit into your Health Balance – but its mere existence can make gigantic withdrawals.  Do your best to deal with this stuff head-on, even if it sucks. Some things are actually out of your control, and that has to be okay, too.

In summary, how much of your Health Balance you can afford to “spend” (i.e. the total of your PhysStress and PsychStress) depends mostly on the size and frequency of your deposits (i.e., how much effort you’re putting into Recovery – nutrition, sleep, and specific recovery practices). 

Note:  Before you even ask, no, we cannot quantify this for you.  We can’t say an ice bath is worth 10 health dollars, and a two-a-day training session costs you 20.  You know why?  Because context matters.  Your specific lifestyle and health status play a crucial role in how much you deposit or withdraw from your Health Balance with any given factor.  For example, an evening of dietary off-roading may cost a lean, insulin-sensitive person 10 health dollars, but it may cost an overweight, autoimmune-suffering person 100.  This equation requires you to self-analyze, and determine which factors have the biggest effects on your own individual Health Balance.

Some Health Balance Examples

Some factors detract enormously from your balance. For example, the short-term sleep deprivation that normally accompanies a new baby takes a pretty serious toll on a person.  In this example, you are not able to make large deposits to your balance, even if you’ve backed off of hard training, and are still eating well.  It’s like taking a big pay cut for a few months – your spending habits have to change.  However, what you’ve done up until this point makes a big difference.  If you have a large Health Balance “savings”, you can make it through this situation relatively unscathed.  However, if you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, barely covering your withdrawals, an unexpected life situation like a new baby will absolutely break you.  Still with us?

A nutritional strategy like intermittent fasting (our favorite example) might be just the right amount of “stress” to drive a positive adaptation in one person’s body, causing the overall effect to be positive. But in someone else, that additional stress only further taxes an already-overstressed system, and may actually detract from their Health Balance. Of course, every person’s scenario is unique, which is why no one can state definitively that IF (as an example) is universally good or bad.

Figuring out your individual context can be tricky, especially when you are both the least qualified person to accurately assess your “stuff”, given how close you are to the subject matter – but also the only person who has all the information about your own context.  But with our big-picture approach, some practice (and perhaps some guidance from a professional), you’ll be able to better evaluate your own overall health balance, and create a solid plan to keep you in the black.

Is Your Health Balance Off Balance?

All too often, we see people struggling to figure this stuff out – really struggling, working hard. They’re committed to making changes, to progressing, to improving… but they’re either overvaluing/undervaluing some factors, or completely overlooking one or more pieces of the puzzle. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but we’re hoping that this post will prompt some more honest introspection. Here are some examples of genuine-but-misguided efforts to improve health:

• Looking for a nutritional solution to a lifestyle problem, such as attempting to offset the effects of chronic stress by cutting out fruit or nuts, or trying a new PWO whey protein.

• Being frustrated with your “plateau” (performance, weight loss, whatever) and doing more of what got you this far.  “If high-intensity training helped me lose 20 pounds, then more of it will probably help me lose those last 10.”   All of those factors (Intensity, Frequency and Volume) multiply to create a potentially astronomical PhysStress product before you even realize it.

• Being so wound up about sticking to the Whole30 guidelines that you actually create more stress for yourself. Folks, the Whole30 is a self-awareness tool, not a hazing.

• Over-exercising to manage your stress.  Sometimes you need to suck it up, buttercup, because being an “exercise addict” is not a flag you should proudly fly – and will put you into Health Debt faster than you can say, “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

• Being over-stressed and under-sleeping, but still cutting calories to try to lose that stubborn belly fat. (One word: cortisol.) Don’t underestimate the power of sleeping more and stressing less on body composition.

• Grappling with “that shoulder thing” and looking to your physical therapist/chiropractor/acupuncturist to magically fix it instead of taking a week (or two!) off from the gym to focus on nutrition, sleep and bumping up your Recovery.

Any of these sound familiar?  Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been working hard in all the wrong areas – the thing that counts is that you’re willing to work hard.  Looking at the big picture is difficult, and takes practice – and sometimes, a template (like our equation) to help you figure it all out for yourself.

Taking Care of YOUR Health Balance

We hope our Health Equation has cued some critical and honest self-analysis, and helped you think about factors outside of nutrition as they apply to your health and fitness. Given that each person’s context is different, we’re not able to make blanket statements about how much or how little is appropriate for you, but we bet that if you stop and think about it, you will probably be able to intuit a reasonable direction to head.

In the coming months, we’ll be talking a lot more about context, non-nutrition factors, and (hopefully) a sane way to combine these things into a life that is deeply enriching. If you leave with just one concept, please remember: context matters.  Drop feedback, questions or thoughts about your own Health Balance to comments.

In yoga, there are two kinds of positions.  The first requires strength to hold the pose.  The second requires you to soften and yield.

I suck at softening.

I approach my yoga the same way I approach my deadlifting – with the same Type A, stubborn, controlling personality that suits me oh-so-perfectly to someplace like Gym Jones.  And for some poses, that works beautifully. Standing splits against the wall?  I don’t look like that girl, but I can tough out the hold with the best of them.  Full side plank?  Nothing but good, old-fashioned midline stability.  Handstands?  Please – I’ve done so many, it’s practically cheating.  But move me into something where I have to soften – the shoulders, the spine, the face (yes, I’m often told to soften my face) and it all falls apart.

I have no one to blame but myself.

After six years of doing nothing but measure, count, chart progress and mark improvements, I don’t know how to soften.  I don’t know how to relax, I cannot “yield” (whatever that means), and I most certainly cannot refrain from trying to kick your ass at yoga.  My instructor told me last week to close my eyes when I practice.  This was after she caught me looking around, seeing the old guy next to me had his leg higher than mine, grunt (yes, I believe I actually grunted) and forcibly yank my toes up juuuust a smidge higher than his.  And then I fell over.  (But still, I believe I won that round.)

Measuring, counting, charting and improving are all good things when it comes to fitness.  I firmly believe you need the structure of a planned program, the discipline of a log book, and the stats to prove you’ve pushed yourself and exceeded your own expectations.  Without those things, fitness progress comes slowly and is often unrecognizable.  But for the love of Shiva, I need a break once in a while, if only for my own mental sanity.

I’ve been a perfectionist my whole life.  In school, a minus sign next to the “A” on my report card grade was cause for much hand-wringing and dismay.  (That was second grade.) In my past career, I stayed longer and worked harder than anyone else – and was promoted faster than anyone else in the history of the company.  In the last six years of CrossFit, kettlebells and Gym Jones, my logs were meticulous (I love a good Excel spreadsheet) – cross-referenced and notated within an inch of their life.  And the gold stars I gave myself for a new PR were a huge part of what kept me motivated.

I have none of this in yoga.

There are no grades, no promotions, no logs or tracking of progress – and gold stars are explicitly forbidden.  It’s just me and my mat and a constant struggle to soften.  Nobody cares if my leg is straight, nobody cares if I bent just a smidge lower today than yesterday, and nobody cares how my shoulder muscles look in Warrior 2.   Just me.  I’m the only one who cares.  And because of this, I am constantly challenged in my practice, too often manhandling myself into a position, stepping outside of the moment to worry about my progress, and refusing to yield.

I do yoga for fun.  Mostly, I go to calm my constantly tense body and ever-racing brain.  I go because my cortisol levels told me I should, and because I’m a calmer, happier, saner version of myself after 90 minutes of moving in flow.  It’s more therapy than exercise, although I’m surprised at what good exercise it is.

And despite some intrinsic urge to make my time there more “practical”, I’m not trying to improve my deadlift or squat through yoga (although that wouldn’t surprise me at all).  My practice is supposed to be a break from myself – from counting, measuring, charting and most of all, judging. So this morning, I will do my best to soften, yield, relax and let the pose dictate where my body ends up.  To be safe, though, I’ll probably close my eyes.

Namaste.

There Is No Free Lunch

Trouble is, things don’t work like that.  If there were a valid shortcut to optimal, well-rounded, big-picture health and fitness – don’t you think we would have heard about it by now?  We sure haven’t stumbled across it.  (And we live this diet and fitness stuff.)  The truth is, there is no such thing as a free lunch.  There is efficiency.  There is intelligence in programming.  There is concentration of focus, absolute dedication, fierce determination… but everything that’s worth doing requires – demands – that you work your tail off to get there.

The Secret

You want to maximize health and achieve optimal fitness?  We’ll tell you exactly how to do it. 

Eat foods that makes you healthier, every meal, every day. Eat foods that makes you less healthy infrequently, if at all. Eat just enough to support activity levels and goals.

Exercise. Work hard. Harder than you are now. But more importantly, work smart. Too much volume, intensity and frequency is just as bad as too little.

Recover. Devote as much effort to recovery practices as you do to training. This is not optional. Most fall miserably short in this category.

Sleep 8-9 hours a night, in a cool, dark room. Make time for this. You can get away with less, but only if it’s summertime.

Manage your stress. Deal with it in a healthy fashion. Stress will undermine all of the above.

Do this, day in and day out, for years and years and years, as consistently as you can.

We Don’t Do Shortcuts

If you do these things, as often as you can, as consistently as you can, for as long as you can, you will be healthy.  You will be fit.  And your body composition will reflect that.  Trouble is, that’s not anywhere near as much fun as the promise of a shortcut.  And it’s nowhere near instant gratification. 

But anything worth doing is worth doing right.  And when it comes to your health, “right” is the only way you should consider.  So we won’t offer you fads, false promises, or miracles.  We’ll just tell you what you need to do to earn your 400,000 hour body, not just today, not temporarily, but forever. 

We’ll be expanding on these concepts – how to “put it all together “- in future posts.  Because while this stuff is all pretty simple, it certainly isn’t easy.  Stay tuned.

The Pre-Prep Prep

Our “prep” for the RKC began in earnest about four months before we headed to St. Paul, MN to take the challenging 3-day course.  Our program was designed to add a specific set of skills to a foundation of substantial general experience with strength and conditioning training, during which we often used kettlebells as tools.  (Actually, it was those round hunks of iron that brought us – Melissa and Dallas – together in the first place, as we first met at a mutual friend’s kettlebell seminar.)  Melissa has a particular love for the ‘bells, having used them extensively, trained with some talented RKCs all around the country, and acted as an assistant coach at kettlebell instructor certifications under Jeff Martone on several occasions.

Our first step was to evaluate what would be asked of us at the cert, so we could formulate an effective plan of attack.

The Physical Requirements

On top of their general strength, fitness and coaching ability expectations, the RKC has several specific physical requirements:

1. Do 5 pullups (men) or a 15 second flexed-arm hang (women).
2. Complete 100 KB snatches (at a specified weight) in under 5:00.
3. Be able to demonstrate technical proficiency in 6 movements (that require significant full-body strength and coordination).

We’ll add a 4th requirement here: be able to tolerate a beating.  (We’ll talk more about this shortly.)

Our post-cert analysis of these four requirements? The pull-up/hang and technical proficiency tests are reasonable for most people, assuming some basic strength and significant experience with your hand(s) on a ‘bell. The snatch test, while the most physically demanding requirement of the RKC, is also also perfectly doable for a person with reasonable fitness, significant experience with KB snatches, and a little mental grit. However, the snatch test requirement leads many people to focus obsessively on that one metric – at the expense of the other, significant demands of the weekend. (And most people overlook that you’ll not be performing the snatch test fresh and rested – a serious tactical error.) Finally, that 4th requirement… well, that is mostly a mental capacity. Which many people perhaps ignore during their preparations, but for which, thankfully, we trained.

The Plan

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not saying the RKC was easy, or that it does not require focused and determined preparation. We’re simply saying that it is attainable for folks willing to do some specifically targeted hard work (and work smart).

When we decided to formulate a “plan of attack” to step up our readiness for our testing, we knew what we could and could not do. We knew we’d have no trouble with the pull-up requirement, but the snatch test (i.e. 5 minutes of high work output) and the requirement for general work tolerance had our full attention. When we registered in December, we knew that our work capacity was not adequate – and we knew we had to tackle that first.

Since we were preparing for a specific event, our training, likewise, was targeted at improving our abilities relevant for that event. We did not practice double-unders or kipping muscle-ups. We did not do sumo deadlift high pulls (in fact, we never do that foolishness). We did not pick exercises out of a bucket and hope they got us to our goal. Instead, formulated a specific plan of attack, based around the following concepts:

1. Getting better at snatching kettlebells. We worked with several RKCs on snatch technique, and incorporated KB snatches in a variety of formats into many of our training sessions.
2. Continuing to work pull-ups into our regular training program, since we think the pull-up is critical to foundational strength development, and it was one of our testing metrics.
3. Practicing the various movements that we needed to perform (essentially) perfectly at the RKC, like swings, cleans, presses, front squats, Turkish getups, and snatches.
4. Find a damn good strength and conditioning facility to get us physically and mentally prepared to work that hard for that long.

Let’s look at these four points in a little more depth.

Goal #1:  The Snatch Test

In the four months leading up to the RKC, we snatched more, and more often. The point of doing more kettlbell snaches was to improve our technique (and thus save our hands from tears, blisters, and grip failure) and to reacquaint ourselves with snatching under metabolic duress. However, we did not beat the snatch test to death. If we prepared properly, we’d not need to practice the test more than once a month, assuming you’re starting to prepare a few months out. (In fact, we only completed practice snatch tests three times leading up to the cert.) The focus on technique work and practicing the movement in the middle of ugly conditioning sessions was critical to our success; both of us passed our snatch tests with over 30 seconds to spare and lots left in the tank.

RKC Prep Recommendation: Work with a local RKC to refine your KB snatch technique such that you’ll be able to do 100 snatches in a row without destroying your hands (or approaching grip failure). Furthermore, don’t just train 5:00 of snatches.  Mix up duration, reps, weights, and add other movements on a regular basis. Dallas really likes a KB snatch/row pairing (ick), Melissa likes snatches and burpees (double-ick).

Goal #2:  The Pull-Up Test

Second, attain (or retain) good dead-hang pull-up strength. A good way to get strong at pull-ups is… doing pull-ups. Try a Pavel-inspired “grease the groove” program – we’ve found that to useful for many of our training clients. For the record, kipping your pull-ups will not make you better at real pull-ups, and don’t think that your spastic kangaroo impersonation will be recognized as pull-ups at the RKC. (That only works in CrossFit-Land.)

RKC Prep Recommendation: Make sure your pull-ups are solid and strict in form. Have a third party judge a set using the RKC standards, to make sure you’re not missing an important element. Go into the weekend over-prepared.

Goal #3:  The Skill Tests

Third, become intimately familiar with your kettlebell. Make it your best friend. Carry it everywhere. Don’t let it get lonely. Talk to it (optional, but we did). Practice your KB movements, like, a lot. It’s partly so you’re really, really good at them when you arrive, but it’s also so that, when you’re pretty beat down after ten hours of kettlebell work, you still have the neurological durability to perform high-quality movements.

On that note, practice perfect movements. Doing more and going faster, isn’t better. It’s just more, faster. Like our friend Dutch Lowy says, “More isn’t better. Harder isn’t better. BETTER is better.”

Finally, get some professional help from the organization about to certify you. Find a local RKC certified instructor to coach you on form, improve your technique and offer assistance drills to prepare you for the skill requirements.  Don’t practice poor movement patterns – let a professional teach you the RKC-approved way to move the KB.

RKC Prep Recommendation: Practice perfect movement, even when you’re tired. Practice specifically when you are tired.  Don’t succumb to the perverse urge to go faster simply to speed it up. If it doesn’t look pretty, you’ve got no business going faster.  Spend significant time with a kettlebell heavier than your recommended (snatch) weight, because (a) you’ll definitely be using it at some point during the weekend, and (b) it’s a mental thing – your assigned weight won’t seem so heavy if you’ve been using a size up.

Goal #4:  Survive a Beating

Last, get used to working hard for a long time. No, we’re not becoming proponents of the randomly prescribed and haphazardly arranged sexy met-con. We’re just saying that if you’d like to get better at doing things for a prolonged period of time (i.e. longer than 5-15 minutes), you have to do some training (mental and physical) to prepare yourself for that. This is where our coach, Rob MacDonald (aka “Maximus”) comes in.

We were fortunate enough to start training under the tutelage of Rob at Gym Jones, right here in Salt Lake City. Rob intimately understands both the physical and mental demands of “taking a beating.” You see, we don’t pay Rob to be a nice guy. We don’t pay Rob to promise quick-and-easy fixes to big problems, or to stroke our egos and make us feel good. And we don’t pay Rob to tell us that doing random things will make us better at specific things. We pay Rob to assess our weaknesses and to buttress them.

Rob learned quickly that we liked short, hard sessions, had spent the past year training only things we were already good at, and didn’t have the “finish at all costs” mentality. And he learned that our work capacity was nowhere near high enough.

RKC Prep Recommendation: Get some help with your programming.  You aren’t smart enough to program for yourself, you aren’t honest enough to make yourself do things you hate, and a random exercise plan isn’t gonna get you to a specialized goal.  Look to someone smart, experienced and maybe a little bit scary to tell you what to do for a little while. (An experienced RKC with a strength and conditioning background is a good place to start.)  You can go back to the “Things I’m Good At” show when the RKC is done.

During our preparation, we did many “meaningful” sessions totaling an hour or more of hard work. (Not necessarily hard work for an hour straight, but an hours’ worth of focused training that would make us much more durable when it counted.) More accurately, we did lots of short bouts of work in the 5 minute range; after all, the snatch test had a 5 minute cut-off. We rowed, Airdyned, squatted, slam-balled, snatched, box jumped and ski erg’ed in short, hard rounds.  (And sometimes, we cursed him in 5 minute rounds, too.)

But no 5 minute workout – no matter how hard we worked – would have provided sufficient stimulus to make optimal fitness gains for the kind of challenge we faced. So we did multiple short work segments (called “blocks”) – sometimes with oh-too-brief rests in between, sometimes back-to-back.

This degree of commitment to our training required equal commitment to our recovery, including lots of hour-long low intensity sessions, foam rolling, stretching and getting comfortable in our fair share of ice baths. We did more specific “active recovery” and spent time addressing our mobility issues, both with bodywork and with self-mobilization techniques that Dallas picked up in his ten years as a physical therapist. And while our nutrition is normally pretty darn good, knowing how hard we were working (and wanting it to “count”), we stepped that up, too. It was ON.

RKC Prep Recommendation: Get used to working hard in various short “blocks”, but do more than one block per training session. A daily 5-12 minute met-con isn’t going to cut it for the RKC. It’s also okay to do a 60-plus minute training session and be moving the entire time – but there’s a caveat. Intensity is a potent, dangerous tool, and must be wielded intelligently and with care. Maximal intensity plus excessive frequency plus increasing duration (with inadequate attention to recovery) is a recipe for disaster.

And in our final words on “taking a beating”, here’s some real heresy: Training every session with maximal intensity is not the best way to accomplish this goal. We know, it’s sacrilege to even say such a thing. But if we only ever did AMRAPs or short sprint-type workouts, how would we be able to build the (mental) durability to work hard for ten straight hours for three consecutive days? And if we did try to hit all those hour long sessions at maximal intensity, how would we not eventually be broken? (No, these are not trick questions.)

Goal #5 (Special Bonus Goal):  Take Care of Your Hands

Finally, there is one additional behind-the-scenes preparation you must do before your RKC… hand care.  Get intimately familiar with your pumice stone, callous grinder, sandpaper and Bag Balm.  Make hand care a part of your daily training routine, because when prepping for the RKC, a rip or tear means a week away from hard training.  (And we suspect any RKC candidate can’t afford a week off from training.)

RKC Prep Recommendation:  Research and practice good hand care in the weeks leading up to the cert.  Don’t do stupid things that might cause you to rip (like a bunch of kipping pull-ups), and stop training immediately if you do develop a blister or tear.  You can practice with hand wraps, sock sleeves or tape, but we don’t recommend it.  Learn proper technique, don’t just cover up the rough spots.  (But make yourself a few of these hand protectors before the cert, just in case.)

Special thanks to Rob “Maximus” MacDonald, our trainer at Gym Jones, James Sjostrom, Level II RKC and owner of CrossFit NRG, Chris Brown, RKC and owner of EmerFit, and John Spezzano, RKC and acclaimed martial artist, for getting us ready for the RKC. We are grateful for your encouragement, guidance, expertise, and all the general butt-kickings.

The RKC:  By the Numbers

The RKC is, in our view, the gold standard of kettlebell certifications.  It’s the most recognized, the most highly respected and the one you want after your name if you’re going to make a career out of coaching kettlebells.  It’s also one of the more expensive seminars, one of the most time consuming in terms of preparation, travel and the long weekend itself, and one of the most physically demanding weekends we’ve experienced to date.

Cost: $1,500 – $2,300 for the certification itself, depending on when you register. Add to that travel expenses – airfare, hotel, rental car and food. (You’re lucky to have a cert in your area of the country; most folks have to fly.) Add an additional $50 – $350 for preparation materials from Dragon Door (books, DVDs, kettlebells, etc). and a varied amount for preparatory lessons with an RKC, if necessary.

Time Commitment: 1 – 6 months to prepare, depending on the proficiency of your kettlebell technique, strength, general physical conditioning and coaching experience. Five days for the event itself (two travel days and three days for the actual certification).

Physical Demand: On a scale of 1-10, the RKC certification itself gets a 7.5 ranking. You’ll be working non-stop with heavy (for your size) kettlebells for two 10-hour days, and performing several challenging workouts a day. On the third day, you’ll then be expected to perform perfectly on a variety of physical tests, followed by a demanding coaching session (and, of course, yet another workout.

Sure, the RKC is a lot of money, a lot of time and a whole lot of work…. but what you get for your efforts was, for us, well worth the cost.  The weekend itself brought a wealth of experience on a number of levels.

The RKC:  What’s In It For You?

First, we increased our kettlebell skills to a surprising level.  Working with certification leaders like Pavel, Jeff O’Connor and others brought our practice to a new level.  (We expected to improve our technique, but not to the degree we both experienced during the cert.  Despite the fact that both of us have been working with kettlebells for over five years, and Melissa has been coaching professionally for three, our movements were dialed in tighter than ever by the end of the first day.)

The biggest surprise, however, was how much the RKC taught us about how we moved.  We expected to pick up new skills over the weekend, sure, but we didn’t expect to learn so much about our own bodies, limiting factors and movement patterns – things that carry over to so many other aspects of our training.

Take Home:  The things you will learn about good movement – and your own movement – at the RKC will apply and transfer outside of just kettlebells, to your Olympic lifting, strength training, skill and conditioning work.  The quality and amount of personalized critique, feedback and instruction you will receive over the course of the weekend is unparalleled amongst all of the other fitness certifications we’ve attended.

Second, the RKC is an instructor certification, and they take that responsibility seriously.  It’s not just about demonstrating good form, it’s about being able to evaluate, correct and fine-tune the form of others.  Any good coach knows you can’t just yell, “Push your knees out” at increasing volume as your client sits knock-kneed in the bottom of a squat.  You’ve got to have 17 different cues for the same exact movement, because everyone responds differently to verbal, tactile or visual feedback. 

Throughout the course of the weekend, we learned endless coaching cues, analogies and drills all designed to make us better, more effective coaches (and get better results for our clients).  Every tip we learned gets stored in our mental rolodex, to be pulled out next month or next year, when we are in just the right situation with a trainee.  Add that to the cues we’ve accumulated during our years of coaching and owning our (former) CrossFit gym and we’ve got ourselves a pretty good supply of tricks designed to make our clients stronger, fitter and healthier – and make us look like damn good instructors.

Take Home:  The RKC certification will gift you with countless ways to coax the best movement, the best technique, the best form out of your clients.  Make sure to take detailed notes every second of every day –  and not just during lecture, because some of the coolest tricks come from the team leaders and assistants during  your group sessions.

Third, provided you meet the mandatory requirements and pass your certification, the RKC gives you the most respected title in kettlebell coaching.  If you want to make your name as a kettlebell instructor, you must have “RKC” after your name.  There are other instructor certifications out there, certainly – CrossFit offers one, and there are other kettlebell “styles” like the AKC, but in our opinion, the RKC represents the best of the best, and is the one that will most effectively sell your services to others.

In addition, the RKC community is extremely well developed and organized, and can afford you the most assistance in getting your coaching practice off the ground.  In fact, we attended a very interesting marketing lecture during the third day of our cert, designed to help the new RKC make the most of their new credentials and build their business.  It was practical, applicable stuff for the newly christened instructors, and  we came away with more than a few good tips for the Whole9, too.

Take Home:  If you want to make a name for yourself coaching kettlebells, you HAVE to have an RKC certification.  While you can acquire plenty of well-respected “letters” after your name in the strength and conditioning field, when it comes to kettlebells, the title “RKC” has no substitute.

Finally, the weekend was one of the most physically demanding certifications we’ve attended… and we’ve done a lot of hard stuff.  One thing that surprised us about the cert was the serious strength component, which was reflected in our tasks and tests throughout the course of the weekend.  It’s not just about demonstrating safe, efficient, effective technique, it’s also about being strong and fit.  And if you’re not prepared for the physical demands, you may be in for a bit of a shock.

In addition, they beat you pretty hard for the first two days.  There isn’t a lot of leeway for being tired, for hands ripping, for muscles cramping or grip fatiguing.  You’re expected to move (and move fast), and every movement was ordered as “perfect practice.”  (No one got away with sloppy technique at any point during the weekend.)  The days were long, the ‘bells never got any lighter, and the swings were endless.  ENDLESS.

It wasn’t just physically demanding, either… there were plenty of mental challenges to overcome.  (See Melissa’s prior post about the RKC for more insight on the mental aspects.)

Take Home:  If you can make it through that weekend without breaking down – all the practice, skill work, workouts, and tests; all the instructions, reviews, questions and demands – then you’ve earned the right to feel pretty good about yourself.  And that experience should be enough to carry your confidence for a long time to come.

The RKC:  Is This For You?

Because of several factors already mentioned – the cost, the time commitment, the physical demand – the RKC isn’t for everyone.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself before signing up for the RKC.

Question #1:  Do you want to make coaching kettlebells your primary business, either as a trainer or as the owner of a kettlebell-focused gym?

If the answer is yes, then start preparing, because the RKC is an invaluable (and necessary) step in your professional kettlebell coaching career.  If the answer is no, then think twice about whether you can spend the time, energy and money.  While the RKC was an amazing experience for us (and we do plan to use our certifications), not everyone can afford taking five days and thousands of dollars to have a meaningful “learning experience.”

In addition, we’d recommend you have some coaching experience before signing up, too.  You’re expected to have a pretty sharp “eye” throughout the course of the weekend, and especially during your instructor evaluation.  You can’t learn to spot movement flaws, limiting factors and technique weaknesses in a weekend, which means you’ve got to practice your coaching skills just as much as your kettlebell skills in the months leading up to the cert.  We used just as many of our own personally-developed coaching cues during the weekend as we did the cues they taught us, which meant we had even more tools in our arsenal to help our fellow RKC candidates and coach our “victims.”

Question #2:  Do you want to incorporate kettlebell movements (like the Turkish get-up, clean and press or snatch) into your gym or coaching practice, using kettlebells as one tool of many? 

If you fit this category, perhaps as the owner of a CrossFit gym or a private training business, then you’re going to have to decide for yourself whether the RKC is right for you.  The certification will certainly help you improve your own skills, fine-tune your coaching ability and deliver you the right “letters” to have credibility within the health and fitness community, but it’s a pretty specialized certification for someone who will only use kettlebells occasionally in their practice.   In addition, you need to be pretty well prepared before you attend the cert, which usually necessitates a few months of private coaching with a local RKC-certified instructor in your area.

You might also consider the HKC Instructor Certification, also from Dragon Door. It’s a step down from the RKC – you cover only three movements, and the tests aren’t as difficult – but it’s still a highly credible certification that will help you be a better instructor (and would be a great preparatory tool for the RKC). The second answer to Question #1 still applies to you, by the way.  Practice your skill work and your coaching before you sign up for either certification.

Question #3:  Do you simply want to be able to teach your CrossFit classes safe and effective kettlebell swings (generally the only movement programmed in CrossFit workouts)?

Is this you?  Good on you for wanting to improve your skill work.  First thing first, however… for the love of Pavel, immediately ditch the “American swing.”  It’s stupid, it’s unsafe for many, and 99.6% of your class will never do them correctly anyway.  (To paraphrase our good friend Dutch Lowy, harder isn’t better, better is better. If you’ve got a burning desire to perform a movement that will take the kettlebell overhead, it’s called a snatch.)

Next, don’t bother with the RKC – taking the cert just to learn how to properly swing is overkill.  Instead, find an RKC-certified trainer in your area to give you (and your class) some proper lessons.  The RKC can teach you cool variations on the swing, too – things like double-KB swings, the DARC swing and power swing – so you can keep your clients sweaty, happy AND injury-free.

Question #4:  Do you just want to learn more about how to incorporate kettlebells into your own training, without instructing others

Cool – we like that idea.  There’s far more to strength and conditioning than what CrossFit teaches, and kettlebells are a great tool to add to your fitness arsenal.  Until you’re proficient with the basic kettlebell movements, though, the RKC isn’t for you.  You should instead work with a local RKC-certified instructor, either with private coaching or group training, so you can learn the movements safely and effectively (and omit any bad habits before you start ingraining them into your movement pattern). 

If there isn’t an RKC in your area, our friend Sarah Lurie is the author of “Kettlebells for Dummies”, and has some amazing resources for teaching yourself kettlebells.  (Find them in the Whole9 Amazon store.) Start with Sarah’s instructional tools, and keep an eye on the Dragon Door site for an RKC or HKC Certified Instructor in your area.

The RKC in Review

We hope this review helps you decide whether the RKC is right for you.  If so, next week we’ll be featuring a post all about how we prepared for our certification.  We’ll discuss everything from conditioning to hand care to programming (without giving away TOO much of what your RKC cert will entail – we don’t want to spoil the surprise!)

Got questions about our experience, the certification itself or what it means to be an RKC?  Post them to comments.

Melissa and Dallas with Pavel

While it may seem obvious to those of you who have been without cable for a few years now, we’re here to present the rest of you Kill Your TV participants with 174,203 (almost) things you can do with your life instead of watching TV. (We’re also giving you links to products we like in our newly opened Amazon store, to help get you started.) Take back those hours this month and do something productive, fun, enriching or restorative. Like what? Glad you asked.

Improve Your Training Performance

• Stretch
• Perform self-myofascial release
• Go for a recovery walk/bike/swim/paddle/row
• Read training-related books or articles
• Do some skill work
• Practice yoga
• Update your training logs
• Get a massage
• Take an ice bath
• Connect with your trainer or fellow gym-goers
• Lay out your short-term and long-term training goals
• Get acupuncture

Improve Your Sleep

• Go to bed earlier
• Read a book
• Take a hot bath
• Have sex
• Develop a pre-bed routine
• Prepare clothes/food/work for the morning
• Buy and install black-out curtains
• Read Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival
• Read Dallas’ sleep article in Performance Menu

Improve Your Nutrition

• Prep and cook food for the week
• Try a new recipe
• Visit a local farm or market
• Clean out your pantry
• Take a cooking class
• Prepare a new vegetable
• Read a cookbook
• Make a weekly meal plan
• Find a new nutrition book
• Sign up for a CSA
• Host a dinner party

Improve Your Family Time

• Call or visit a family member
• Play a board game or cards
• Read a book together
• Go outside and play
• Cook dinner together
• Help your kids with their homework
• Take a family walk after dinner
• Plan a family trip or vacation
• Have a date night with your significant other
• Work on a puzzle
• Do a craft project
• Write a letter or send a card
• Organize family photos
• Plan a party or an event

Improve Your Household

• Train your dog
• Finish that project that’s been half done for 6 months
• Clean something
• Organize something
• Start a garden
• Mow the lawn
• Plant a tree or flowers
• Have a yard sale
• Start a compost pile
• Wash your car
• Send stuff to Goodwill
• Get your oil changed
• Do laundry
• Go through stacks of papers and mail

Improve Your Fun and Play

• Pick up a new sport
• Go rock climbing
• Learn to swim
• Go for a bike ride
• Have a picnic
• Play with a slackline
• Play boccee
• Play ball with your kids
• Climb a tree
• Have a block party
• Throw a frisbee
• Go for a hike
• Nap in the grass
• Go to a local baseball game
• Shoot some baskets

Improve YOU

• Take an adult education class
• Get a pedicure
• Plan your dream house
• Go to church
• Volunteer
• Learn to knit
• Write something
• Take an art class
• Browse your local bookstore
• Get involved with your neighborhood
• Get involved in local politics
• Finish your will
• Join a book club
• Meet with a financial advisor
• Organize your business receipts
• Take yourself out for dinner
• Go to the dentist
• Test drive a car you can’t afford

What Will YOU Do?

Okay, so we don’t quite have 174,203 things… but this is a darn good start. And we bet you can come up with even more ideas to fill those TV-watching hours. So what will you do instead of watching television during the month of May? Submit your best ideas to comments.

The ice bath has long been used by professional athletes, long-distance runners and athletic trainers, but isn’t something your average gym-goer would think to incorporate into his or her recovery practices. For the weekend warrior, softball league participant or three-times-a-week exerciser, a post-workout ice bath probably sounds a little hardcore. And to some degree, it is – there’s nothing fun about sitting in a tub full (and we mean FULL) of ice for 15-30 minutes. But the recovery benefits far outweigh any potential short-term discomfort, and the effect it has on recovery is why we’re sharing our experience with you today.

Cool Science

The logic behind ice baths relates to the muscle damage that results from hard workouts. This damage is actually a good thing for our fitness. You train hard, which creates microscopic trauma to muscle and connective tissue. During your recovery period, those “microtears” repair themselves just a little bit stronger than they were before. (Say it with me, kids… you don’t get fitter while you are training, you get fitter while you are RECOVERING from training.)

But the damage done during a hard training session also produces muscle soreness and inflammation, which can interfere with subsequent training. Ice baths temporarily constrict blood vessels and decreases metabolic activity, which reduces swelling and tissue breakdown. And immersion allows controlled, even constriction around all muscles, effectively blunting microscopic damage that you may not even feel. (You may hit the tub to relieve sore quads, but your calves, hamstrings, and hip/knee/ankle connective tissues will all gain the same benefits.)

The second advantage involves a physiological reaction provoked by the large amount of muscle submerged. After the initial shock of the ice-cold water, the body responds with vasodilation – a rapid circulation which flushes the damage-inflicting waste from your system. Once out of the bath, the area warms up again, and new blood rushes in to help the healing process.

Ice Me, Please

Many benefits of an ice bath are localized to the immersed area. (You’ll get some anti-inflammatory benefits systemically, but the real goal is to target the stressed muscle groups.) If your workout was a shoulder smoker or a general conditioning session, an ice bath won’t hurt, but where this particular recovery tool really comes in handy is when you’ve got specific muscular stress in an area you can actually immerse in the icy water. (If you’ve worked an area you just can’t cover in ice, you might want to consider a contrast shower instead.)

If you’ve got a Jacuzzi tub and can submerge your entire body in the ice bath, you’ve got more “ice me” options than those of us with a normal bathtub. (It’s also a hell of a lot tougher to submerge yourself in, though – that ice-cold water over your chest is quite a shock to the system.) If you’ve just got a normal-sized bathtub, it’s going to be darn hard to completely submerge your upper body. In that case, use the ice bath primarily after what Rob calls, “mother-smucking leg day”, like heavy squats, sprint intervals, or the mountain of wall-ball, slam-ball, Airdyne calories and bear crawls we did last week.

Our Experience

About a week into our new training regimen, we were instructed by Rob MacDonald (known around Gym Jones as “Maximus”) to jump into an ice bath after a particularly “meaningful” session. Despite Melissa’s hesitation, when Rob tells you to do something, you do it, no matter how unpleasant. Which is how, 20 minutes later, we found ourselves lugging five bags of ice (50 lbs. in total) into the bathroom, cranking the tub water to cold, dumping in the ice and hitting the tub.

The first few minutes were so unpleasant, we’re hesitant to describe them here for fear you’ll all stop reading. (Please do not stop reading.) You can’t breathe. You think you might actually die. You think, “This CANNOT be healthy.” It makes your brain scream that something is seriously Not All Right with your body. But soon, your breathing steadies, your legs and torso go all red and numb and it’s really not that bad. No, really.

We traded off in five minute segments the first time, accumulating 15:00 in total. (Since then, we realized it’s easier just to get in and stay in, doing all our time at once.) Getting out of the bath was a challenge since we couldn’t feel our legs, but we quickly dried off, hobbled over to the couch, threw on some warm clothes, made some hot tea and shivered our way back to a normal body temperature.

The next day, we were amazed at how good we felt. The comparison between our first workout there (rough, no ice bath) and this workout (even more rough, plus ice bath) was astonishing. Our legs were mildly sore, but not destroyed. We were able to squat and run the next day with no problem at all, in fact, and went back to the Gym two days later ready to hit it hard again. In just one session, we had become ice bath converts.

The Chilly How-To

Ready to get started? Assuming you’ve got a standard bathtub, here’s our prescription. Grab three to five bags of ice – that’s 30 – 50 lbs. in total – from your local grocery store, convenience store or gas station. (More ice than that is overkill and can actually further damage muscles, and any less isn’t going to be cold enough.)

Next, you’ve got some pre-bath prep to take care of. Grab several towels (one for the bathroom floor, one for you, and possibly another small towel for behind your shoulder blades and/or to rest your elbows on in the tub). We always bring a chair into the bathroom, because it’s hard to stand for a few minutes after you get out. In addition, you may need someone to talk you through it the first time around – the chair, some good music, your favorite magazine or book and a friend willing to watch you suffer all come in handy.

This next tip is really important, especially for the men. For the love of Peter (and your Pauls), keep your underwear on. Ice cubes directly on your special parts will make the experience so much more unpleasant than it already is, and your legs get JUST as cold whether you’re wearing undies or not. We’ve also heard of folks wearing shirts and wool hats while soaking their legs, which may also help stave off shivers. On that note, make sure you’ve got some warm clothes at the ready – wool socks, warm pants and a warm sweater will help you bring your body temperature up faster post-bath. Finally, grab a watch or a timer of some sort, because you’re going to want to stick it out for at least 5:00 at a time.

Now you’re ready for the big show. Fill your tub with cold water – COLD, not luke-warm. Remember, the temperature of your tub will rise steadily with your body heat. Make sure the ice is crushed and not in giant blocks, and dump it all in. Now get in. Right now, don’t think about it, don’t hesitate… just get in, all the way, RIGHT NOW. Don’t give your brain a chance to rebel, because if you balk here, you might not ever get up the nerve to get in.

Now, breathe. Just breathe. We promise, you are not dying. You’ll have to fight your body’s “flight” mechanism for the first 2-3 minutes, which is why having a friend with you is such a good idea. Let them talk you through it, focus on your breathing, and just… sit. It helps to have your toes out of the water – we rest them on a 6” foam roller at the bottom of the tub, but if you’ve got neoprene socks, you can wear those too. It also helps to lean back against the wall, loosen your death-grip on the side of the tub and do your best to just RELAX. Eventually, your breathing will return to normal, everything from your belly-button down goes numb, and it’s actually pretty tolerable.

You’ve gotta stay in for at least 5:00 this first time around – but shoot for a solid 15:00. Dallas will sometimes soak for up to 30:00, but that’s about as long as you should stay in. The benefits don’t continue forever, as muscle and tissues will eventually tense up when exposed to that kind of cold for too long. The first time, we read scientific journals to each other to take our minds off the cold, but at this point we just hang out in the tub with a book or magazine until the timer goes off.

The Post-Bath Wrap-Up

When your time is up, be really careful getting out of the tub – if you’ve done it right, you won’t be able to feel your legs. Immediately get out of your wet clothes, dry off completely, and put on your warm stuff. Do whatever you can to warm up – move around, don’t sit still – but resist the temptation to jump into a hot shower right away. Let your body warm up naturally, and allow that swift rush of blood to continue the recovery process.

Another word of caution – expect to shiver for twice as long as your bath. That means you’ll be shivering – really shivering, teeth chattering and everything – for 30 minutes following a 15 minute bath. (So don’t plan on making any business calls or leaving the house for a little while.) Finally, a cup of warm tea or soup will help this process along, and make you feel more comfortable while you’re warming up.

So there you have it – our guide to the ice bath. Try it after your next front squat 5×5 or track repeats and let us know what you think. Got your own ice bath tip or trick? Share it in comments.