American Kettlebell Club Blog

First I’d like to thank Chris Hoffmann at AIM Sports Medicine for offering his gym for the L.A. Certification. He bailed us out of a situation when one of our Coaches had a family emergency and cancelled hosting our event at the last minute. We had a large turnout and even though the gym was narrow (space in LA is a commodity!), we managed to make a lot of people happy based on the feedback we’ve been getting.

If you are in the LA area, don’t hesitate to stop in and see Chris. He’s a professional Trainer and a super Kettlebell Coach, but he is also well educated in body/deep tissue work. I know first hand because Chris helped me with a situation on Training Day that Sunday. See, the day we arrived I spotted a 48kg bell on the floor of his gym. Valery said, “you wanna try??”. I had never seen a 48kg that wasn’t within the specs of our Pro-grade bells before. Now, I’ve tried the 40kg of the same manufacturer and didn’t like the unbalanced feel, but I had 1 Arm Jerked a 50kg in Greece (same dimensions as our WKC bells) with success, so I wasn’t worried. That wasn’t smart… Maybe it was the cross country flight and 2 hour drive in LA, but I didn’t warm up and when I cleaned that big thing it sure felt heavy! My legs were dead… I dipped for a Jerk and tried to launch it up, but it wasn’t happening. I got it about 3/4 of the way up and back down it came. I didn’t set it down before trying another attempt. Another mistake… This time I managed to almost get it locked out, but it rolled over and came inward, and in trying to support it I tweaked my shoulder. I didn’t say a word at the time, but you just know. Later that night Valery said “you aren’t happy?”. I said no. He said “you have no legs”. I said “thanks, I think I hurt my shoulder a little”. He said “you should have warmed up”. Don’t you just love hindsight?

3 lessons learned…

1. Warm up well
2. Don’t use other people’s bells
3. When it really feels heavy and your first attempt is ugly, don’t try for another!

On Sunday I wasn’t totally out of the game. I managed to do some work with 24kg in the 1 Arm LongCycle (100 reps / 10 min. 1 Switch) but it was aggravating just knowing that “rope” was in there limiting me. I began asking Chris about deep tissue work, ART etc. I told him what I did, where it hurt and he took me over in the floor for about 5 minutes and proceeded to squeeze it out in various ways. The next day I felt as if someone had taken a baseball bat to my entire shoulder, but underneath that pain I could tell the sharper pain was already less intense. Over the next few days I began to feel it less and less, so in 1 week’s time I felt much better and am ready to go back to my typical program. Thanks Chris!

Eric Liford, Editor
American Kettlebell Club

Those in LA can find Chris Hoffmann at:

AIM-Sports Medicine
2407 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 9:48 am and is filed under American Kettlebell Club. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.