How to train when you are very, very busy.

Marc Tellez

I have spent six years in post secondary education; during that time I trained in a variety of physical disciplines ranging from taiqi to breakdancing, fencing to butoh. I first became interested in movement when I noticed that the performance training I was receiving in university was lacking the variety, sophiscation, and difficulty that I craved. My years of “sampling,” many different forms was certainly edifying, and taught me a lot about my own coordination as well as some cool party tricks;however, to my detriment, never committing to any single practice for an extended amount of time, meant that I never plateau’d, and hence never learned to master the perceptual stamina required to overcome my perceived limits. Since I found kettlebells last summer, I have begun to correct this deficiency, and challenge myself in ways I had never imagined, even while I had a very busy school schedule.

Those who have attended a performance conservatory can attest to the relentless and often unstable class schedule imposed. While it is not med school, theatre school is an energetic challenge. How can one be physically active all day, sometimes in excess of 14 hours, with only Sundays off, with the same 11 people for three years, and have any time for his/her development that is not directly related to the curriculum? Here are some ideas that helped me to train with an overwhelming timetable.

Be creative with time
The divisions of time imposed on us by work or school, are ultimately arbitrary and often have little to do with our energetic capacities, or optimal physical effiency.The kettlebell is a excellent device for perceptual stamina because, if you’re training correctly you cannot use it casually, or without your full physical and mental engagement. However this does not mean that full engagement should necessarily consume an hour or more of your time, especially when that hour may be virtually non-existant. Keep your workouts short, and as Pavel says grease the groove. I swear by it. The time I spent at home (awake) for the past year was roughly 2.5 hours per day. Some of that was spent eating, the rest was spent working on theatre school stuff: analyzing text, learning lines, etc.
As a beginner, one exercise that I found particulary challenging was the bottoms up clean; so, I decided to do it as often as I could, with the best form I could. Every time I would break from my work to get a glass of water, or to go to the bathroom I would take a minute to do a set of bottoms up cleans. At first it was only sets of 2 or 3, but pretty soon due to my focus and frequency it became 10, then I proceeded to do the same with a 55lb kettlebell.
Just be 100% present in the exercise, and 1 minute of work will become a lot more valuable than others would have you believe. If you’re at school or work and don’t have a kettlebell, do a set of push-ups or hindu squats when no one is looking-or when they are looking. They might think you are weird, that’s fine: you can be sure that they are either lazy or envious. Invite them to join you...which leads me to my next point.

Find a training partner
One of the best ways to refine your form is by watching someone else. Using a mirror is vain and useless,
because it does not allow any valuable proprioception to occur, which is one of the main benefits of a dynamic tool like the kettlebell. Aswell, watching someone else and giving them reminders, encourages oneself to treat form in a detailed and rigourous way, which can only have positive effects. I was able to inspire my roomate and some other classmates to become kettlebell enthousiasts. So, not only was I able to work on my coaching, creating kettlebell and bodyweight circuits that kept everyone busy, but with four guys working out I was actually able to heat my apartment on “man-power,” which saved me money on hydro bills through the last dismal Montreal winter. Also, sometimes it is valuable to have some external motivation on your lazy days to get your ass off the couch and the corn chips back in the cupboard.

Here’s a four person circuit with 3 minute stations,
A) 3:00 minute circuit with 36lb
B) 5 sets of 10 swings in 3 minutes with 55lb,
C) push-ups (variety) e.g. wide, med, narrow, elliptical 3:00 minute
D) rest/ timer for station A
complete circuit 3 times
As you can see this is a very time efficient circuit; in a mere 36 minutes 4 people get a challenging workout that is not just an aerobics class.

Work Eccentrically
The load that is placed on the muscle during an eccentric movement is not distributed over as many fibers
as during a concentric movement. (Ebbling, 1989)1 This means that eccentric actions, (e.g. after completing
a press, the lowering of the weight back to its resting position is an eccentric contraction) produce greater tension per cross-sectional area of active muscle than concentric contractions. By focusing on these “negatives”
you are working harder. Why is this useful? In those beginning days of mastering a new exercise when it starts to get easier, but not easy enough to add more reps, by lowering the weight slowly (3-5 seconds) I gave myself a challenge without increasing volume and compromising form. Studies have shown eccentric training to increase the area type IIb muscle fibres (those found primarily in the arms) 10 times more than concentric training(Hortobogyi, 1996)2.
Training Goals
Training is never an activity solely unto itself. We train to be better at doing something else. With that in mind, if what I am about to describe sounds strange or distant from experiences you are familiar with, ignore
that and examine its content for how to design a creative training protocol specific to what you are trying to accomplish.
This year I performed in a play that was four hours long, in an 800 seat theatre, I wore heavy Elizabethan
period costumes, as well did a fairly risky fight involving rapier and dagger, a large table, slippery floors and low lighting levels. It was winter, and as work days became longer, approaching the final production, I became increasingly more exhausted and found it harder to do serious kettlebell workouts with any frequency. I had to have a new plan, and so I decided to try training for the play. I knew I would be dealing with heat, because the costumes were authentic and made of heavy non-breathing materials, as well the obvious stamina requirement due to the plays duration and the precision that it takes to do dangerous things with sharp objects. I never had the costume to rehearse in, or the heat generating stage lights, so at home I set about trying to recreate the environment in which I would be performing. This meant turning up the heat in the apartment, and wearing heavy clothing while doing a 10 or fifteen minute kettlebell routine. The intensity of exercise compensated for its shortened duration compared to that of the play’s. The kettlebell set was also improvised, which challenged me to move without hesitation from exercise to exercise eventhough I hadn’t planned what I was doing. So it was an exercise in alertness as well as stamina. Sometimes during the session I would speak text to work on my lung capacity while fatigued, and to simulate the breathing constraints placed on my lower lung lobes in the doublet I would be wearing. Concluding the session, to sweat more, I took a very hot bath. I was acclimating myself to being constantly sweaty while accomplishing gross and fine motor skills. By the time we were performing in the theatre I was well prepared for what was being asked of me.

Complexity
Rather than just performing higher volume workouts, make them more complex.
1) Bottoms Up Snatch
Pretty self-explanatory. Obviously do this one at the beginning of a workout.
2)One-leg pass
Pass the kettlebell from hand to hand around your quad. You can also try bending and straightening your suspended
knee with each revolution to fine tune your balance.When you feel burly enough, tack on pistols(one legged squats) after each 5 revolutions, or use a heavy kettlebell.
4) Bottoms-Up lunges
Perform a bottoms-up clean then take a step forward, and bend front knee or both knees.
5)Twist Squats
Like stationary dragon walks. Heels remain planted in a wide stance, then as you twist and sit keep your knees pressed tight together. At the bottom keep your knee close to your ankle and your spine straight. This one is good if you don’t have room for dragon walks.
6)Squat Presses
Clean the kettlebell and as you descend press it overhead.
7)Differential Double Military Presses
Double military presses with two kettlebells of different weights is an interesting way to confuse your nervous system, and can reveal flaws in your form.

Good luck, and remember: you can’t save time, you can only spend it. Spend it well.

Marc Tellez is and actor and kettlebell enthusiast based out of
Toronto. His most recent creation, "Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With
Us," a show about the conquest of Mexico, has played in Montreal,
Ottawa, and New York. He has worked with Soulpepper Theatre in
Toronto, and is currently involved in the development of various
interdiscplinary art projects. Marc is a graduate of the University of
Toronto, and the National Theatre School of Canada.

1Ebbeling CB, Clarkson PMExercise-induced muscle damage and adaptation. Sports Med. 1989 Apr; 7(4): 207-234. Review.
2Hortobagyi T, Hill JP, Houmard JA, Fraser DD, & colleagues. Adaptive responses to muscle lengthening and shortening in humans. J. Appl. Physiol. 80(3): 765-772, 1996