Giant 1.1: Week 2

StrongFirst has the Victorious course by Fabio Zonin on 25% off sale. Victorious is focused on the fine points of pressing a heavy kettlebell. My kettlebell training in the past couple of years has been mostly influenced by Geoff Neupert. I continue to be a fan of Neupert's teachings but I see Zonin also enjoys a lot of respect in the kettelbell training community, and so I've been curious about how he teaches kettlebell lifting. While Neupert is a former StrongFirst coach and Zonin is a current StrongFirst coach, each coach inevitably has their own perspective which may be useful to study.

For the Monday session I tried incorporating the Victorious pressing techniques. I realized why Zonin advises a rebuild from the ground up approach to learning and practicing the Victorious style of pressing. This style makes sense but it's hard to switch to it without putting in the time into the pressing techinque rebuilding process as advised in the Victorious course.

Also my left shoulder was feeling less stable and more irritable after trying the Mark Wildman style of kettlebell clean. It doesn't seem to respond well to the internal rotation that the Wildman style forces onto the shoulder. So for the Wednesday session, I switched back to the Neupert style of KB clean. Another thing I did to try to improve shoulder stability was, after the The Giant session, do 30 seconds per arm of waiter carry. This is just walking around with the KB held overhead with locked out arm. I got this idea from Steve Cotter and Dan John. Dan John in particular stated in this article that it does wonders for the shoulders. GMB has additional thoughts on loaded carries here

I also switched back to Neupert's style of KB press for the Wednesday and Friday sessions. Without practicing the recommended foundational exercises in Victorious beforehand, it didn't make sense to switch to the Victorious pressing style. Victorious appears to be intended specifically for improving at pressing a heavy kettlbell, and comes with recommended assistance exercises and unique techniques to practice. Victorious might be more useful for when I start pressing the 24kg KB, which at present is too heavy for me to press to full lockout. At present though I'm working through The Giant 1.1, with the intention to follow up with Giant 1.2. I do note need to switch to the Victorious pressing style now.