Thank you Jesus.

I was blessed and honored to be able to travel to Seoul for the first-ever Asian RKC certification.  Pavel did not attend, leaving me with his orders to “Handle it, Tamer.”  Thankfully I had a great team of Jon Engum and Dr. Mark Cheng to help me handle it. John Du Cane also mad an appearance, which always great.  None of this would be happening without him.

Jon Engum, Sr. RKC, is a 7th dan in Taekwondo and 4th dan in both Hapkido and Kumdo, a Korean sword art.

Dr. Mark Cheng, Sr. RKC has a PhD in acupuncture and Chinese medicine, is a Black Belt Instructor in Combat Shuai-Chiao, Master Instructor in Yang style Tai Chi, Senior Instructor in Gee Yung Sil Lum Fut Ga, and has instructor credentials in Yod Khun Pon Krabi Krabong and Jeet Kune Do.

My own experience, in addition to being a Master RKC,  is in the practice of Southern Praying Mantis Gungfu and JKD/Filipino MA.

Three Ninjas in effect.

Jon, Doc & myself drew on our collective Asian MA experiences, which proved to be invaluable in communicating with the attendees. They understood the comparison of precision, practice, internal focus, etc.

Ki Kettlebell Che

In Kumdo, there is an expression “Ki Kum Che”. Ki stands for the spirit and the will, Kum stands for the pertinent usage of the sword, and Che stands for the parts of the body used to attack. (i.e. strength of the muscles, strength of your grip on the sword, force of the blow, and swiftness of the motion) An attack is considered valid only when these three factors come together at the precise moment of the blow.

Substitute “kettlebell” for “sword” and you have the essence of the internal focus of the RKC. It is the difference between swinging a kettelbell and doing Hardstyle swings.

This is from a lecture explaining each of the 3 ballistic movements of the RKC  in terms of Fa Jing explosive power. Summarized: The swing is forward, the snatch is upward and the clean is in and down. In a culture where martial practice is as popular as baseball or football is here, this resonated very well.

Of course, I just wouldn’t feel right if i didn’t break something. I used bending a horse shoe as an example of how to apply tension techniques in a non-kettlebell setting.

The attendees were great, all of them made us feel at home. We made them do swings.

Many thanks to Kenneth Lee for laying the foundation with Jon and his work as an assistant, Gun Jung and Haran Choi for organizing and hosting the event and to the other assistant instructors Taikei Matsushita, Matthew Brockelbank, Im Gyutae, Masataka Ueda, Woo-chae Yoon and Fredrik Hogstrom.

RKC Asian Invasion.

Many thanks to Team Tamer for the hard work and effort.

Team Tamer brings the metal. Hardstyle. Seoul Style.

I am honored to have been a part of this historical event. Tamer Somchoon (Uncle Tamer).

We begin and end with respect and honor.

The final trailer for the movie Kraftakt is live on youtube. Check it out:

 
I don’t know the release date yet, but i am hoping it will be early 2012.

Thick bar training has long been recommended as a great addition to the training arsenal of the aspiring grip fanatic and with good reason.

I am a big fan of thick bar training, but it can be a pretty daunting expense for the average person to invest in a thick handled barbell and/or dumbbells. One company that is addressing this is Grip4orce.

The Grip4orce handles come in 2 levels of difficulty and slip right onto your standard size barbell or dumbbell, creating a thick handle. One cool feature about this product is that it doesn’t just clip on and sit there. You MUST squeeze the handle or that bar will roll out of it. This gives an added element that makes even light weights quite unruly.

I have used the Grip4orce for barbell deadlifts, presses, rows and curls as well as dumbbell rows and curls. The feel is very similar to my thick bar, but the grip4orce handle has more give and it feels like my fingers dig into the surface a bit.

I am a fan and will continue to use the Grip4orce as a part of my training. You can pick up a set HERE.

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while. I have been slammed busy, including a two week trip to Australia for the second time to teach another HKC and some other workshops. This was one of those rare trips when I get to take Mandy with me for a little bit of tourist action along with the mission of spreading the message of the RKC.  It’s nice to have a professional photographer along ( she took all the shots in this post), plus we got to hang with our friends Andrew Read, RKCTL and Shannon Scullin, RKCII of Dragon Door Australia.

We spent the first few days at St. Kilda, drinking coffee and getting acclimated to the jet lag. The coffee in Australia is amazing and we got to see some wild penguins off the pier in St. Kilda. One of the things I really like about Australia is that it is similar enough to the US that it is easy to get around but different enough that you never forget you are in another country. There ain’t no penguins in Nashville. Or flying foxes, which are giant fruit bats that come out at dusk.

Friday the work began. I did seven 1-on- 1 personal training sessions and a workshop with Andrew about building your business as an RKC or HKC instructor.

Saturday was the HKC. A great group of folks came from all over Australia and did a great job. Congrats to all the new HKC instructors! I look forward to seeing you grow and hopefully become RKC certified.

Sunday we did three workshops.

The first one was based on Enter the Kettlebell. Clean, press, squat and snatch, rounding out the other RKC fundamentals. I also did a quick little feats of strength show to demonstrate how the skill of generation tension applies to things other than kettlebells. Like sledge hammers.

I'm Hardstyle and I know it.

Pavel is fond of saying that in the RKC we “get big men to move as well as little girls and get little girls s as strong a big men.” Shannon Scullin is a little lady who can swing big man weight. Like double 32kg kettlebells.

Let's hope she doesn't bulk up.....

The second workshop was a short, 2-hour version of the material from my Deepening Your Getup Skills DVD.

Deeper we go......

2 hours on just the getup? Yes, and it is just enough time to scrape the surface and get folks thinking.

We finished off with an Intro to Indian Clubs then Andrew and me taking turns talking about Program design.

Thanks to Andrew and Shannon for organizing a great event and to T.C. Lee for helping out. I had a great time and am looking forward to heading back next year.

On September 17^th I attended the 28^th annual Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongman banquet.  I love going to this event because it is a chance to be around living breathing strength history.  Upon my arrival Friday night, fellow RKC Eric Moss was waiting for me at the hotel with kettlebells for me to borrow.  Thanks Eric!

On Saturday I got to spend some time talking with Chris Rider about training, various aspects of strongmanism and the upcoming documentary Bending Steel. I am very excited that with this film and Kraftakt there will be TWO documentary movies that feature strongman within the next year.

One of my favorite part of the AOBS is getting to spend time with the legendary Grandmaster of strength, Slim the Hammer Man. I always walk away from a conversation with Slim having learned something new. I also got to spend a few minutes with Mike Greenstein, the son of the Mighty Atom.

Chris Rider organized two the feats of strength shows. The first one was called Oldtime Stars of Strength.  This show  featured Chris’ student Chris the Wonder  Schoek, Chuck Weist, Tommy Heslep and myself.

Performing on the small stage, I had an opportunity to demonstrate a few kettlebell feats of strength and dedicated my signature feat to Slim’s recently departed wife Shirley.

The evening show on the big stage was announced by the Mighty Stefan and featured amazing feats by Sonny Barry, a world record performance by Gary the Brickman Brown, and a great display by the Irish Iron Man John McGrath, which included his official Red Nail bend for certification.

I LOVE this signature scroll of his.

It was also great to get to see friends and fellow strongmen like Pat the Human Vise Povalitis, Greg Matonick and Tom Kelley.  See you all next time!