don't look now, but this one's about me.

Since the About Me portion of this blog has been empty for a while now, I thought it was time to fill it up.  Trying to write about something big and amorphous always sucks, but this was my initial stab: ***

My name is Will Belew. I am interested in living up-to-my-elbows, in letting the dirt of what I do get between my fingers and under my nails, and in keeping my daily practices honest to the bigger arcs of my life. I think creativity is just curiosity applied with care and intent, and I think all the other pursuits of life are layered on top of that creative function. I think the internet-era and all its trappings have made us wake up to the changeability of anything, for better and for worse.

I was trained as a classical musician, which is to say I learned to survive with the daily look-in-the-mirror that anyone with a regular practice knows, and that practice is today still my most significant rudder. About two years ago, I turned my scope toward the fitness industry, intrigued by how my life-long curiosity with physical improvement might be studiously optimized and professionally applied. Once fully immersed in the strange but wonderful world of barbells and sweat and Lululemon, I realized that lessons from the conservatory practice room applied just as fittingly with physical culture. I realized that the two worlds overlapped in some of their most central aspects, namely in how they both rely on the power of the coach, how they both demand personal integrity, and how they are both hell-bent on improvement. This blog is about that confluence.

First, to coach or be coached is an amazing way to interact. It is something that I hope everyone has a chance to experience, often. Most musicians don’t even realize how powerful a force their teacher is or was until much later, and most people who personal train are really just looking for that relationship to shape their progressive experience. I love thinking about how we might coach better, how we might be coached more effectively, and how compassionate coaching is one of our most human functions.

Second, for all the noise that today’s media environment allows, there is still an appreciation of quality, especially in the music and fitness industries (and elsewhere, too, I’m sure). Without discounting the importance of professionalism or networking (blogging...), by far the most important determiner of success in these two fields is how well you do what you say you’re going to do. And while I love that appreciation of both pursuits happens most substantially inside the listener or coachee/athlete (did you like that musical moment? did that way of moving feel easier?), there is a certain strictness that defines quality. At the end of the day, there are no smoke and mirrors to muddy the view of improvement: are you stronger? does your sound ring, and is it in time and in tune? Yes or no.

Finally, all the people really invested in these careers care about little more than how well they do what they do. Surely much of this is professionally motivated (paying rent is always fun), and probably most of it is motivated by that existential fear of inadequacy that lurks deep. But, really who cares? Being relentless about being excellent sure beats most alternatives, so long as it is compassionately applied. That final caveat about compassion is incredibly important though, and shapes the kind of excellence that you achieve in beneficial ways, I think.

All of this strikes me as exciting, and rich with lessons to be mined; that process of exploration and discussion is the meat of this blog. But no meal is complete without a kick-ass side-dish, which in this context are all the practical ways that the lessons learned play out in daily life: for every post about quality I hope there is one about your GI-tract.

Sit back, look around, and tell me what you think!

10,000 swings.

It's funny that up until now, this blog has been a travel log, mostly because I started it with much grander aspirations.  What I want the blog to be "about" is a more important nugget to write on that will get done soon.  Not to say that writing about a trans-continental trip is somehow unimportant, but such a topic is pretty comitted to the experience, rather than the lessons learned, in a way that I would like to transition away from, somewhat.  I would hope to write more about things that might be directly useful. So, first up in this new vein is exploring the 10,000 kettlebell swing challenge that I set up for myself when I left on said trip. It was a sort of guiding force, giving me a semblance of normalcy even as the landscape changed so quickly. While I wasn’t able to get it done before getting to Oakland I did finish, yesterday. I’m glad I did it, and it was definitely edifying thrash against a challenge like that. But boy am I glad to be done.

I first heard about doing 10,000 swings in a somewhat constrained time-frame from the singular Dan John, who often comes up with those sort of excellent ideas that cozy right up to crazy ones. What I love is that usually what he says seems totally common sense and totally ridiculous, at the same time. This time, he chased down the “do as I say and not as I do” paradigm and tackled it to the ground. For all the times we as trainers praise the kettlebell, listing its singular benefits, he said, much of the time we don’t make good in our training. What if we did?

Sure enough, after doing a ridiculous number of swings (and some other things, which I will get to) I feel mostly great, in all the ways that I would’ve outlined to my clients had I recommended they try it (and not everyone should!). My posture feels better, my legs and core (god I hate that word) feel strong, I flat out can’t get winded without sprinting uphill, and I’m not suffering at all after sitting in a car for the literal 75 hours of driving that my trip demanded. Score!

While the math worked out to about 350 swings a day, that meant zero rest days, and took zero account of other physical things I might do. With my one 24k kettlebell straining my grip after even the first hundred in a set, I figured out pretty quick that days off were crucial (duh!), as was exploring various ways of breaking the daily totals up. For example, DJ utilized a 50-25-15-10 arrangement (totaling 100), in which one would wait for their heart-rate to chill out between micro-sets (e.g. after the 50, 25, etc). I tried all different arrangements, and just waited for my heart to catch in between.

As for the breaking up the whole sets (between 100’s of swings), DJ totally went Easy Strength on that one, I presume, basically doing them as they felt good, and resting as needed. As my workouts mostly had to be accomplished in a single session during my trip, I would do a prescribed number of swings (80-120) broken into micro-sets, superset a pressing variation, and then just loop. While I started with ~350-swing daily totals, this last week (when I was trying to get the damn thing done) I did 700, 800, and 1100 in a day.

This was not usually very enjoyable (har har). While my hips never barked much, and any residual soreness was mostly pleasant, my damn forearms were always a weak-link. I am not a Popeye type for damn sure, but it’s not as if I have never trained my grip either (2x bodyweight deadlifts?). Grip issues, as well as related skin/callousing details (very sexy), were by far the most annoying part of the whole experience.

As for the pressing, switching up the variations helped a lot both physically and as a super-setted relief for my hands/arms. I only did three different exercises (single-arm military presses, turkish get-ups, and feet-elevated pushups), but it was enough to balance all that whole-body pulling (the swings). Throughout, the workouts felt like a turn away from strength as a goal (which was definitely disconcerting, except for the military presses), but the resulting work-capacity gains will round me out in a productive way, I hope. And the mental break from grinding out heavy singles, doubles and triples was more welcome than I realized before setting out.

When I first read about the idea, other than being struck by its simplicity and suited-ness for my gym-less status en route across ‘Merica, I liked the monumental feel to that number. 10,000 is a lot of anything. It’s something that can’t just be stuffed in that black hole of instant-gratification, even if a month is just a flash in the pan of life. It’s also a number to respect, a number that humbles and grounds you--try handing someone $10k cash sometime--and a number that gives perspective about what it is to challenge yourself. And it’s a nice counterpoint to the more instinctive, park-bench workouts I do most of the year (its own blog topic).  Honestly, the sheer repetition became  meditative, too, and it allowed me the chance to become intimate with the tiny details of the movement, without being too conscious.

If anyone wants more information, or guidance to attack your own challenge, please be in touch. It doesn’t need to be 10,000, and it doesn’t even need to be swings. But it needs to be simple, focused, balanced, and realistic, with just a little brutality thrown in for hair-on-your-non-gender-specific-chest reasons. And it definitely needs to be programmed appropriately in terms of your normal activity.

Lastly, the idea of returning to training normalcy feels just right. For me, that will mean a very loose monthly plan of movements that are not a hinge (like the swings), focusing on strength and power, but with wiggle room for whatever might come up. In a word, back to the park-bench for me!

Cloud-Concerts to Life-Building

Shazam, I have made it to the Bay. While this last week has been somewhat of a blur, it is nuts to think of all the accumulations that have happened while I was busy scooting from coast to coast. After visiting my auntie and uncle in central Washington for your standard eco-tourist super-luxe vacation weekend (splitting wood, trail running, local salmon, wood-fired sauna, apple-pie from the garden...), my brother and I skipped over to Seattle for a day/night. Like everywhere else, I was a little gobsmacked by how much I had missed as a youngster traveling through these same locales. Seattle is a seriously excellent town (which I know EVERYone else already knows), and huge! Pike St. was fun, of course, but Fremont and Wallingford were killing it! Walking at night along some canal (I feel like there are at least 341 canals in that city), I had that all-important realization of wealth having nothing to do with money: the air was crisp, the view twinkled, my hosts were generous, the strangers smiled. Even the bus system seemed smoother than it needed to be, always a sign of a city that knows what's up.

But the clock was ticking. An easy day of driving brought us to Eugene, somewhere I had only ever stopped for pizza with my family. My good friend from Boston (and nearly ALL her roommates) are grad students in the Athletic Dept. at University of Oregon, which definitely gave a good look into that most-important side of Eugene.

While my brother and I decided early on to take somewhat of a duff-day, there was plenty of opportunity to take in the singular weirdness of the college-town phenomenon as executed in the Oregon wild. On the one hand, the University has created a hyper-progressive crack in the otherwise rural/conservative backdrop of the region. Out of that crack has grown some great research (I assume), a liberal populace interested in enlightened ways of creating community, and a solidly hip downtown bar/food scene; into that crack, however, has fallen a huge group of drifters whom only need to label themselves as hippies to be embraced by the town infrastructure. Without sounding too liberal myself, I think homelessness is a systemic problem masquerading as an individual one (most of the time), and in Eugene's case, it seems like the system at fault is the contrast Eugene creates with its surrounding communities. Like osmosis, people stuck in tough circumstances are drawn to areas of seeming abundance, and Eugene definitely offers that high-level of public life.

Add on top of that the flashiest program in college athletics today (U of O football), and you have a super city-on-the-hill syndrome. Of course, the football thing has its own problems, with Nike trying to make research done at the university proprietary to the company, considering that Nike has donated approximately 1.5x the State of Oregon's operating budget to the university (kidding, sort of). That said, the beer was incredible, the donuts were wacky, and stadium looked really nice, so there's that.

But reconnecting with my Boston buddy was super fun, and made the the bi-coastal nature of this expedition all the more obvious. She loves her work, loves her house and housemates and is super-committed to daily excellence. Like so many of the people I had an opportunity to check-in on during this trip, I was equally stoked to reconnect and inspired about crafting my own routines. And landing here on Friday afternoon before a blow-out camping trip with the family this last weekend drove the point home hard for me. This new universe I have moved to functions in a balanced and productive way without me being any part of it; I feel equally compelled to both be assimilated by the systems already in place and shake the boat. Both of these goals take some seriously concerted effort, over an extended time, and with great focus. Let's see how it goes.

But before I close this chapter of my life, I thought it'd be nice to check-in on some numbers. While in my car for more than 75 hours, I visited or drove through 13 major metropolitan areas, bought 13 tanks of gas, hugged 38 close friends or relatives, did 6,300 kettlebell swings, 725 pushups, and more overhead presses and get-ups than I care to count. I fell back in love with reading fiction and writing letters, finally got into the Beastie Boys, understood what everyone is talking about when they talk about Montana and mountain-biking, and decided to try being an early riser, even if it goes against my nature.

And speaking of nature, I stopped thinking of the natural world as outside of myself. Somewhere between the spectacular cloud-concerts of western North Dakota and the deafening rush of mountain streams in Northern California, a friend's letter about connecting to ourselves by connecting with nature finally hit home. When the layers are peeled back, there are trees and water and sky, and people who smile and sweat for the important things in their life--that's all.

Thanks to all of you who helped me on my trek, and I will see you soon!