10 MINUTE PLANK? WHY?

What's the point? What have you accomplished? Well, I could go into my ramblings about the differences between inner and outer strength. Dealing with body management under harsh conditions. Getting outside your element and comfort zone. I could go into all the things that happen and how the body benefits from the static load. But here's what didn't happen. Nobody died. Nobody lost skin from the movement. The sore palms went away before the end of the training. You took yourself to a certain level of discomfort and tested your metal. Some put their knees down earlier than they needed because they were told this would take ten minutes. Others tried to do a personal best and just hang in there as long as possible. One classmate wanted some relief from her hands so rather than drop her knees down she went into a one handed plank, alternating hands. How cool is that? A ten minute plank is not outside our abilities. Really, we needed to manage about 5 minutes of discomfort. I don't know why people run, but think of the marathon. 2-5 hrs of pain management. The whole time their electrolytes are being depleted and they are running zombies by the end of the race. We went for 10 minutes and nobody lost a toe nail.
At the end of the day...it's just a thing. Just a thing we did this day. We won't do it again for a while. We will do some "thing" else. We don't train with kettlebells because it's easy. We train because we know first hand how effective and efficient it is. One day soon (August) I would like to have the class do the Secret Service Snatch Test. It is 10 minutes of straight work. You can put the bell down as many times as you want but when the final 15 seconds is counting down that bell better be in motion. Meaning, everyone stays for the duration. It is a ten minute test. Why 10 minutes? Because 5 min is to easy. Not a challenge. Seven minutes a door of discomfort opens. From eight to ten minutes you want to reach for the puke bucket. Men use the 24 kg. Women use the 16 kg as the standard. For our purposes, dropping down one size will be allowed. Additionally, gloves and tape will be allowed. You can switch hands as many times as you want. Just something to chew on as we go into the August month.
Training resumes on Tuesday at 6:15 pm. Have a great weekend. We all wish Leisha a safe bike ride home after the party!