Switched from Kettlebell Burn Reloaded to Iron Cardio

I watched the Iron Cardio video course and studied the manual. I then came up with this program for this week. I'm using the Light/Medium/Heavy concept, which I think is also referred to as Easy/Medium/Hard. To increase difficulty from Easy to Medium I'm adding a Chinup. I've noticed that Chinup practice helps manage my lingering golfer's elbow pain. I've done 4 sets of 3 chinups, for a total of 12 reps, after clean+press sessions. Within the Iron Cardio framework, I'll be doing quite a bit more chinup reps. Brett says several times in the video course that adding a Snatch to the Classic set increases difficulty exponentially, so I have the Classic + Snatch session as my Hard session. There is a chance I may have gotten the Medium and Hard sessions backwards in terms of training difficulty but I won't know until I execute the sessions. Each session will be about 20 minutes.

• Easy: Classic Set (Clean+Press+Squat)
• Medium: Classic + Chinup
• Hard: Classic + Snatch

I would like to eventually focus more on the Press but for now I want to see if I can reduce or eliminate the golfer's elbow with chinup practice, as well as start working on the Snatch which all those weeks of Kettlebell Burn supposedly prepared me for.

Today I did the Easy session. I didn't push myself too hard because I wanted to focus on correct practice of the recommended breathing pattern:

• Inhale: Clean to rack
• Exhale: Press to lockout
• Inhale: Active pull from lockout back to rack and hold breath while lowering into squat
• Exhale: Stand up from squat

I was used to exhaling while sinking into the squat, hanging out for 1-2 seconds while inhaling, then exhaling while standing up. Thus it took some getting used to the Iron Cardio way of breathing. I noticed that inhaling on the clean, then exhaling on the press resulted in a feeling of more power on the press... if the breathing is timed correctly. One principle I'll bring over from the Geoff Neupert world is continued practice of diaphragmatic breathing - ideally air should be inhaled into the diaphragm, not just the chest.

The first time I tried the Single Front Squat - the squat of choice in Iron Cardio - I struggled to keep the KB racked while sinking into the squat. I think the Reverse Lunge training, with the KB in a contralateral rack hold, that I did in Kettlebell Burn helped there. Also, at that time I was trying to stick to Geoff Neupert's style of squatting, which is to keep the feet as close as possible to parallel which helps prevent the knees from collapsing inward. When I did today's Iron Cardio session, I allowed my feet to point outward more, which is more in line with Brett's philosophy of letting foot placement match your hip structure. When I did Goblet Squats in Kettlebell Burn, my feet naturally shifted from parallel to pointing outward as I sank into the bottom of the squat. I quickly got too tired to fight the movement of the feet and just let them be, as my knees felt fine, as well as my low back due to maintaining upright posture.

In about 20 minutes of training, I executed 32 sets, which was 16 sets per side. This is how Brett likes to count sets. I could have done 36 sets if I shaved off a few seconds here and there of my rest times between sets but this being the first ever Iron Cardio session, I felt it was more important to practice the proper breathing pattern and get a feel for the Classic set. This was such a refereshing workout after all those weeks of Kettlebell Burn that felt like torture sessions. Temperatures in this area have been dropping so I've been using house heating more. My body temperature remained elevated after the session, so that I didn't have to turn up the thermostat for a good hour and a half or so. I had a similar effect after some Kettlebell Burn sessions, though I had to put in much more work under that program to get the same effect.