Day Three: the most humbling so far

Ring holds

Wednesday was not what I expected. We worked on bodyweight, toe touches (butt over heels, try it!), frog hold (balancing on two hands with your knees on your elbows), hand strengthening, all in preparation for ring holds. Not that I expected rings to easy – I knew it would be the hardest thing you could ever do because you are suspended in mid-air with nothing but your body to stabilize you – but experiencing it firsthand was eye-opening. I gained renewed appreciation for the strength of gymnasts.

All we had to do was hold ourselves with the rings by our sides and this was okay. Then all we had to do was externally rotate our hands. Whew! Not easy. Then we had to swing back and forth from the shoulders keeping everything else tight. Super hard!

Next, we went back to the kettlebell snatch. We did 10 repetitions with each arm with three progressively heavier weights and back down again with regressively lighter weights for a total of 50 repetitions with each arm. While some were dealing with ripping callouses, I was dealing with a huge bruise on my awesome arm (read: left). The icing on the cake was 3 consecutive minutes of snatching with one weight. The shoulders were feeling it! Time for lunch. Most of us took the opportunity to go the drugstore and buy callous scrapers and Polysporin for our hands. Oy!

After lunch Shawn gave us a talk on what to do when we get back to keep our skills up. Then he spoke at length about marketing ourselves as trainers. While he talked, we “worked our shit”. Which means, we used a ball and worked out some of the knots in our muscles.

Sara then took us through a warm up using shinbox variations to open up the hips and spine. We worked the pancake stretch: sitting with legs wide, reaching forward trying to touch the torso to the floor. What I call partner stretching Sara calls stretching under load. We did that and it felt awesome when it was over! Yes, it hurt. Then we worked the windmill which helped with hip, leg and torso flexibility and stability. Sara demonstrated the seated windmill which takes the shoulder to the floor as you rotate inwardly. A true gumby move.

After some first knuckle pushups, walk-up pike, front and back body lines to prep us for the handstand, we had to do sets of handstands that had to accumulate to equal 2 minutes. Being upside down really screws up your body awareness. Pulling in your ribs and shrugging your shoulders takes on a whole new meaning, or lack of meaning.

So it took us 3 hours to prepare ourselves for 2 minutes of handstanding without popping our ribs!! Fantastic stuff. All in all, an awesomely humbling day. Our trainers truly showed us how much work we have to do!