Giant 1.1: Week 1

The soreness in the elbows that I feel when I shovel snow or do any activity in which the hands supinate while carrying something continues to persist. One possible cause is allowing the elbow to be bent on the backswing of a kettelbell swing/clean/snatch. I like to think that I am not doing that, but to eliminate that possibility, I switched to the thumb-back style of the KB clean favored by Mark Wildman. Wildman has plenty of videos that show how he wants you to clean the KB but this recent video goes into more detail. As Wildman states in his videos, the purpose of turning the thumb back for the backswing, it is it forcces the arm to stay straight on the backswing. The tradeoff is that it also takes the shoulder into internal rotation. The internal rotation was uncomfortable for my shoulder the first time I tried Wildman's style, which is why I adopted Geoff Neupert's style in the first place. Neupert teaches the clean with the KB handle held at a diagonal, so the thumb points diagonally, which avoids internal shoulder rotation, but places more responsibility on the trainee to pay attention to the arm being straigth on the backswing.

As I anticipated, my volume under The Giant 1.1 has been higher than under The Giant 2.0. I did 40 or more total reps per workout under 1.1, compared to under 40 reps per workout under 2.0. The Giant 2.0 is built on ladder reps, which allows some people to do higher volume, depending on the person's conditioning. The manual for The Giant suggests doing 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, then optionally 2.0 for people like me with low endurance. For people with good endurance, the option of skipping the 1.x programs and going straight to 2.0 is suggested. I understand now why the manual makes these recommendations.