I walked into the local café to have my dinner one afternoon between clients, Jane the proprietor was in a bad mood. Being the nosey bastard that I am I asked what the problem was, she replied that she was having some back pain and it was going down her leg.
I told her that it wasn’t a problem that I would look at it and see what it was, I told her that if I couldn’t fix it I would know someone that could. It was then she explained that she was in the third year of remission from breast cancer that had spread into her lymphatic system.
I had a quick look and told her I thought it was her sacroiliac joint that was playing up and her right ankle was completely locked out. She replied that she was seeing her oncologist in a few days and he was concerned that the cancer may of spread to her bones and said she would speak to him first before undertaking any treatment, I agreed whole heartedly and said we would sort it out when he had given the all clear.
On her return from the hospital she said that the specialist wanted her to have a bone scan and had banned her from running in fear of it doing damage to her bones, but he had also told her that she had got to exercise to protect her bones. She was not an happy bunny over this, she couldn’t work out (no pun intended) what she was going to do?, I just started to laugh and said I had gotten the solution at hand.
Jane had never heard of Kettle bells, so I told her a little about them and said the benefits to her would be increased strength and endurance, an increase in cardiovascular fitness and of cause little or no impact. I then fixed up a training session.
We started slowly with swings to see how she would cope with it, I started her on an 11k bell she took to it like a duck to water, it has now been just under a month and Jane is swinging a 16k on some of her sets, and have increased her workout to include chins and military press. Jane is well on the way to doing a body weight chin without assistance.
So how has she made such good progress, well she has applied herself and trained hard. I also found her a training partner that would help push her along they have similar personalities and are quite competitive when together and they feed off each other.
The second lady is Imi and woe betide anyone calling her by her given name which she does not like. Imi is an horse rider and is already relatively fit and is under going a course at my local college where I teach, I was lecturing her class and basically said that in my opinion the way most people train nowadays is wrong and bodybuilding was not the most productive way to train for general health and fitness as it isolates muscles which is not the way the body functions, the brain remembers movement patterns and muscles work in connection with each other and should be trained that way. Imi replied “if your way is best prove it”.
Now Imi has had a long standing low back problem and is very quad and right hip dominant, with Imi we have been doing swings, chins and suit case dead lifts to help retrain the posterior chain, Imi’s back pain has now gone and we are working on the hip problem which has affected her horse riding.
The girls started doing swings with reps as low as 5 and gradually built up to 15 reps for over 5 sets, they are doing chins with the assistance of rubber bands which the girls stand on when doing their reps, we have decreased the resistance of the bands as they have gotten stronger, they will soon be doing full body weight reps.
All this in less than a month of training and even Imi has not bothered to go back to her old style of training, it’s been quite impressive watching these to ladies go about their workouts egging each other on and especially seeing as Jane is still on anti cancer medication.
Further to this both girls can now do body weight chins, using the 16k kettle bell in their workouts and doing sets of 20 reps on their swings, they have made excellent progress in just 4 weeks. They would put a lot of men to shame.
(C) 2006 John (Spud) Murphy FHFST
