I tend to spend a lot of my time working out, not because I have to, but because I genuinely enjoy staying active, and the past weekend was no exception. I had an incredible time attending a couple of 4 hour workshops on GS training and beach volleyball.
On Saturday, I went out to support my good friends and fellow GS competitors Boris Terzic and Eric St-Onge at their very first GS workshop – Excel Your Kettlebell down at the Academy of Lions. It served as an introductory crash course in kettlebell sport training with an emphasis on teaching the attendees the proper form and technique involved in kettlebell sport lifting. There were about 6 of us in attendance and everyone but me was relatively new to kettlebells. I’ve personally been using kettlebells since 2005 and it was just within the last couple of years that I really began dabbling into the world of kettlebell sport. I found this course to be useful and a great refresher on technique, as there are always finer points and nuances to be learned in this sport. All the basics were covered. We began with the swing – the foundation of all movements, progressed onto doing cleans, push presses, jerks, long cycle, then the snatch. A nice touch was the video portion of the workshop which helped break down the moves in slow motion. The guys did a good job instructing and presenting the info, I had a great time, picked up a few good tips on efficiency and got a good workout in. Then afterwards, I bought myself a 20kg kettlebell to complement my training and add to my growing collection of KBs. Not a bad way to spend the day 
Sunday, I took a 4 hour beach volleyball 2′s clinic with Canadian Olympic Bronze medalist, Mark Heese at North Beach. Now, this was an intense workout! …and I can’t believe I did it all on practically an empty stomach, aside from the few sips I had of a kale, frozen berry, pear, almond milk smoothie I made in the morning. It was an incredible experience to meet and actually be learning first hand from an Olympic athlete! We started the training with some drills that included running (fwd/bkwds) in the sand and plyometrics as a warm up then progressed onto several drills on improving bumps, sets, spikes, and defense & offense strategies. On the surface, it’s all basic stuff, but Mark pointed out various tweaks that can be made in terms of form/technique to improve on efficiency of game play, which makes a huge difference in points won and lost. For the last quarter of the clinic, we all got to put those skills to work with a few games of 2 on 2. I was diving all over the court and probably among the few who got entirely covered in sand & sweat. What a great time it was, enjoyed every minute of it and was really tired by the end. I’ve definitely got some homework to do and can’t wait to put these new skills to use next time I hit the beach!
All that kettlebell lifting, running, and diving in the sand made for some really sore arms and legs over the next 2 days. Needless to say, I had such a good time that I had to take some time off from training.