Kettlebell 101

What is Kettlebell?

A kettlebell is a Russian cast iron weight pictured below.

During a kettlebell class you will use a kettlebell to do several different exercises which strength train both the arms and the legs. Kettlebells can be all different lengths so each person can choose the appropriate weight and adjust accordingly. If you would like to see kettlebell in action click here.

Why am I talking about Kettlebells today?

About a month ago one of my good friends at work asked me if I'd want to take a kettlebell class with her. She told me she hasn't been great about lifting weights lately (I'll be honest, minus the shred I am ALWAYS terrible about lifting weights) and was looking for some motivation. She heard that kettlebell training is a work out that is supposed to get fast results. I was a little concerned about my knee at first because of the frequent squatting involved in kettlebell. However, I actually read some articles about people who had improved knee problems through kettlebell, so how could I argue with that. I signed up the next day and a few weeks later, today was my first class.

Since signing up I had heard some rumors about how I was not going to be able to walk the next day. Since walking, and standing up/sitting down etc is a large part of my job I was a little scared.

The Verdict

I made it through ALIVE and well! I actually really enjoyed the class. I love how kettlebells has the benefits of weight training but its a little more exciting than doing endless bicep curls because you get your legs involved too. In fact, my instructor kept saying, "it's all in the legs." Of course I was trying to take the pressure off my legs since basically everything in kettlebell is a squat. However, the instructor told me if I turn my feet out a bit I'll take some pressure off my knees (why has no one ever told me this before) and to be honest they really did not hurt at all during the class. We will see how tomorrow goes.

Since the class is at my gym, but is a registration based class- we really started at the beginning today learning the basic moves including the swinging that you see in all the kettlebell videos, pressing the weight up into the air, and then some weird middle move that involves flipping the kettlebell without bruising your arm that I am still not sure I have mastered yet. I definitely will be sore tomorrow but I am not too concerned about walking. However I do have some now third grade students (that I had in kindergarten) who like to jump on me. I may hide from them tomorrow because although I can still lift them, I don't think my body will be happy to lift them tomorrow.

If you ever get a chance to take a kettlebell class, I definitely recommend it. Especially if you are a bit of a reluctant, or maybe I should say slacker, weight trainer like I am :)

My New Enemy

Meet my new enemy:

The Bee. For a little history, I managed through my whole "childhood" to avoid getting stung by a bee at all. I was deathly afraid of it because other people I knew had been stung and I imagined the pain to be much more terrible than it is. The first time I got stung I was 14 and in Virginia, away from my family for the first time. It didn't hurt too much and life went on. Since then I have been stung by a bee once while talking to a parent when I was a summer camp counselor, once while working at a different camp with a kid who was allergic to bees and I was in charge of his epi pen (couldn't have been more happy that I was the one stung instead of him...haha), once on my first day teaching EVER and once today.

In the past I thought bee stings were not a big deal. They never hurt me that bad, and I am not allergic to them. I'd always rather I be stung than any of my kindergarten kids, especially because most 5 years olds have not been stung enough to know if they are allergic and I'd rather not be around when they find out! However I have to tell you the bee sting I got today HURT, a lot. And I shouldn't say hurt, because it still HURTS...6 hours later. I had my kids out at recess and BAM the bee came out of no where and stung the back of my leg. The stinger was still in and I couldn't get it out myself so I had to hobble to the nurses off so she could take it out. Fortunately my kiddos (today was the first full day of school for them!) were totally oblivious to the situation since they were happily playing on the playground and there were several other teachers around to monitor them. But seriously bees, can we please pick better times to sting me? And furthermore, wouldn't it be smarter for you to avoid stinging me or anyone at all so that you can prolong your life? You know you want to....

Needless to say this cancelled any motivation I had to work out today, but the good news is tomorrow is my first kettlebell class and I am SO scared. I've heard most people cannot walk the day after. Let's just say I need to be able to walk to teach kindergarten so...let's hope I'm stronger than the average person. I keep reminding myself that I went to a Boxing class in Australia thinking it would be like "Kickboxing"- but no, it was just boxing for an entire hour. The next morning I could not take notes in my class because my hands/arms hurt so much. It can't be that bad...can it? I'll let you know...

Day of Productivity

Today is my last day of freedom for awhile because I have some crazy weekends coming up. As a result I needed to be seriously productive. I woke up at 7, which I decided is the ideal time to wake up. It's light out and not too early, but still early enough to get a lot done. I hit the gym first to do some elliptical and a few of my PT exercises. Then I headed to my parents to spread out my stuff and get some serious work done.

I made a bunch of tutoring games on my computer and then set out to do some planning for the kindergarten kids for the week. I didn't come up with anything too great, but I am reading this fabulous book with a ton of kids games in it.

I am trying to incorporate a lot more fun and active activities into the regular school day in an effort to make my class more boy friendly. This is not to say that girls don't enjoy active games, or that my class is not boy friendly already, but I think school in general is more meant for "girls" and I want to try to change that the best I can this year. Hopefully it lasts even when the crazy academics that are now kindergarten take over in a few weeks.

When I got home tonight (after stealing my mom's food processor because we don't have one yet), I decided to cook almond crusted chicken that was in this month's issue of Body and Soul magazine. I have to admit I normally do not cook recipes from magazines because they always have SO many ingredients. However, this one only had a few ingredients: 1/2 cup roasted unsalted almonds, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 clove of garlic, and 1/2 teaspoon of course salt. Even a simple girl like me can handle that. All I had to do was mix the ingredient, put them in the food processor and then rub them on my chicken fillets.

I also added some mashed potato and carrots to make a full meal. Since I can't eat butter anymore, I make my mashed potatoes using chicken broth. They aren't QUITE as amazing this way but I still really like them and they are much more heathy.

I ended up really enjoying the chicken. If you are planning to try it, consider how much you like garlic because the recipe as I made it tastes a lot like garlic. You'll want to put less if you won't like that :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend, I'm off to go eat one of my delicious small portions of Edy's ice cream!

Eric and Kelly Do Boston

I think writing about how time consuming football coaching was yesterday was good luck because Eric came home yesterday with good news, he had today off! Yay! After about 10 different plans we had fell through we decided to just spend some quality time together (especially since it's infrequent now). We went into Boston to eat in the North End at a place called Piccola Venezia. For those of you who don't know, North End is the delicious Italian section of Boston and definitely my favorite place to go for food. I've been going to Piccola Venezia since I was in college. It's nothing to write home about, but it is good Italian food for relatively cheap. After our early dinner Eric and I took a Sunset Cruise in Boston Harbor. Here we are:

Eric and I LOVE to do touristy things, even if we are only 20 minutes away from home. It was an hour and a half cruise and we got to see the airport, the USS Constitution, some of the harbor islands and of course an amazing view of Boston.

And the Zakim Bridge. And by the way, does anyone know what happened to the awesome blue/purple lights that used to be on the bridge? I liked those and they are gone!

There was a bar on the boat so we had to get a drink to celebrate Eric's day off :)

It was a lot of fun. I wonder if Eric and I will ever run out of random stuff to do around MA. I hope not!

Today we did a lot of relaxing and headed over to the Natick Mall for some PF Changs. I haven't been to that mall in years and they added this whole crazy wing to it with tons of high end stores. They actually had a whole store dedicated to Vera Bradley. I was so overwhelmed by the awesomeness of it that I didn't actually buy anything haha. I'll have to be more prepared next time. Or maybe it's better for my wallet if I am not.

Now we are watching I Love You Man haha...interesting so far. Last week we watched Seventeen Again and I have to say, there have been some WEIRD movies out lately. Or maybe we just pick weird ones...

The Coach and Yummy Lunches

I made it through another day with the kiddos and then I get a LONG weekend, yipee! I love starting before Labor Day (this is the first time I ever have) because you get really exhausted but then you get 3 days to recover, and it makes next week shorter which is nice. It's particularly important in kindergarten since most of the kids have not gone to school for a full day before, starting with full day every day for 5 days in a row is a LOT. Last night I went to go see my fiance is his new role as...football coach!

Doesn't he look so serious? Okay so maybe its a picture from behind, but trust me he is serious. Don't the kids look so little? I am so used to watching professional and college football I was shocked at how small the kids are. I was also thinking Eric must have absolutely killed other kids in high school since when he played, he wasn't all that much smaller than he is now. Oh boy! It is amusing to watch him in this new role, but I'm really not amused by the amount of time it takes up, especially because they never tell him what time practices/meetings etc will be until the night before. I want to hang out with him obviously, but if I wait til five seconds before to make other plans, I'll be stuck home every weekend. I think because I am such a planner, I have little to no patience for lack of plans. It's so disrespectful to the lives of the other coaches and their families (or bored fiance) to not have a PLAN so that everyone knows what to expect. You can see now why I teach kindergarten huh? haha.

This morning I've been very productive. I went to the gym and then I set out on a really unsuccessful set of errands. First I went to Target to get a bag for a bridal shower gift I am buying this weekend and more of those small ice creams. Except I forgot to take the bag with my ice creams, and didn't realize until I got home. I had to go ALL the way back to Target (15-20 minutes away) because as we have established, those little ice creams are not cheap! Grr. My other unsuccessful stop was at the library to pick up a couple of books I requested that I hoped to have some time this weekend to read. But no, apparently the library decided to close for ALL of Labor Day weekend. WHAT?! I could see Labor Day itself, maybe even Sunday- but Saturday!? It's like they just expect everyone around here to go away....but some of us have fiance's who coach football so we are still here, please let us pick up our books!

Anyway, I did make myself a healthy lunch. I got the idea from Gina to get some Salmon Patties from Trader Joes. They only have 80 calories and 1 gram of fat! Plus they took about 5 minutes total to grill. I also got some other goodies to mix in.

So I grilled the salmon patty (you can also cook it on the stove, in the oven or in the microwave but the grill seemed easiest) and mixed it with greek yogurt and some mango and put it in a wrap.

It was a bit of random combination, but I wanted to give it a try. Overall I thought it was pretty tasty. I really liked the salmon patty and yogurt combination. I was NOT a fan of the bread AT ALL. That's what I get for buying a "wrap" that is 100 calories less with way less fat. It tasted like cardboard. I am not a HUGE fan of wraps as it is (I'm more of a bread girl) but this "wrap" was seriously terrible. I ended up eating most of it without the bread which was much more delicious. I think next time I will do the salmon and yogurt and mix with more veggies and go for more of a savory meal rather than adding the sweet. Usually mixing mango or apple makes everything more delicious, but this just seemed like more of a veggie mix to me.

It has been my goal recently to try to eat more healthy lunches on weekends because I tend to eat out at dinner and sometimes not get the nutrients I need. I think this lunch definitely worked in the right direction towards that goal so thats good. Anyone have any other healthy lunch ideas?

The Exercise Cure

I made it through the first day of school. I had half of the kiddos today and they were okay. You can never tell much from the first day because they are mostly quiet and just shocked by the whole thing. I hate the first week or two because its a lot of me talking and pretending to be excited about REALLY boring things such as learning how to stand in a line, be a good listener, etc etc. So boring and exhausting. I did have kind of a funny experience this afternoon though when this little boy showed up at my classroom door. I recognized him as being the little brother of one of the girls I had last year. I came to the door to say hi and he said, "where is my sister?" I was confused at first but then I realized he was looking for her and didn't realize she was in a new class...haha cute. And don't worry I did bring him across the school to his sister's new class. Why a 3 year old was roaming the school himself is also beyond me but you never know with some people...

It was only a half day today (we start full days on Tuesday, oh boy!) and I was still beyond exhausted by the end of the day. It was nice to have the afternoon to get things done but I was so tired and my head was killing so I was not all that productive. I wanted nothing more than to come home and take a long nap after work but I took yesterday off from working out and I know I need exercise to stress relieve so I went for the shred instead.

It was like my body did a complete 180 during the 20 minute shred video. All of a sudden I had energy and my head ache went away completely. I was so energized I cooked dinner and cleaned the whole kitchen. I decided my new plan is going to be to do a few minutes of cleaning while cooking dinner at night so I really stay on top of it. I took on "baked tofu" for the first time ever and I have to say the results were delicious.

I started by draining and cutting up some Trader Joe's extra firm tofu. Then I quickly dipped it in some Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce (are you starting to see a trend in where I do my grocery shopping?).

I am obsessed with this sauce, it's truly delicious and such a nice change from teriyaki sauce. Anyway, I put it in the oven on 400 for about 20-25 minutes and turned it over about halfway through. Although it tasted really great, I am not sure if this sauce is really meant to be baked like that because it burned a bit. Of course I am no master cook so it's also possible I just cooked it too long or on too high of a temperature. I served it to myself with some white rice and cooked veggies. Here is my final creation:

It was a nice change from my usual meals lately and I am REALLY looking forward to one of those amazing ice cream cups I purchased at Target the other day. Thanks for all of your great stress relieving tips the other day. It's good to know other people stress without even realizing it. I think today helped me to realize how important making time (and energy) for exercise is. And then maybe it will be more okay to also relieve stress with ice cream!

My 21st Day of School

If my first day of school could drink, tomorrow it would be legal :) (in the US of course, it's been legal for years in some countries haha). Tomorrow is officially my 21st first day of school. I've had 13 as a K-12 kid, 4 as a college student and tomorrow will be my fourth as a teacher. It's weird to think this is my fourth year teaching. My first class started THIRD grade today. Unbelievable. I've spent the past two days preparing the classroom so hopefully it is ready.

One of the things I love about being a teacher (and believe me, I do NOT love everything!) is the idea of starting over every year. Of course a lot of what we do the year before affects us in our reputation and relationships with coworkers, children in the school and parents. However, we get a new group of kids every year and we get to do it all over again, change things that didn't work or won't work with a new group, and repeat our favorite things. My focus this year is to make kindergarten fun again. I am sure the kids think it has been fun all along, but really it has become so academically based it's really sad. I am reading this book called "The Trouble with Boys" by Peg Tyre. It is basically talking about how our sit still and do academics attitude in early elementary school is really hurting boys success in school. I have always made an effort to keep my kids active and engaged, but this year I am going to make even more of an effort than usual.

My goal for this year for myself is to CALM DOWN. When I was younger I think I was a relatively calm person but ever since I began teaching, I am the least calm person and it takes a toll on my whole body. Already, school has not begun and I've been waking up SO early (this is my version of not falling asleep at night, I just happen to be backwards) and my neck started hurting today for no reason at all (clearly stress related). Exercise is really the only thing so far that I have found that REALLY helps me tame the stress so I have to make sure to keep it up even when I am busy. My biggest problem is the fact that sometimes I don't even know I am stressing until I feel it in my body somehow. What do you guys do to calm down? Any stress relieving tips?

Stay tuned for tomorrow's 1st day post :)