Tag: rite of passage

This is officially my last day of RKC swings, I am about to step into the “Man Maker” also called the Rite Of Passage. This is a bit of a relief, since I am anxious to start doing more complex and challenging moves. Although I am still, even now, aware of my form when I do the swings and not at the point where they are 100% natural feeling. The next phase seems complicated and it meshes 2 things together. First is the ladder concept of doing increasing reps and the second is the notion of light days, heavy days and medium days. If you read ETK it goes over the process in detail and I would recommend both the ETK itself and also the excellent Art Of Strength workbook. I am at a true crossroads at the moment, I am in a kind of rest week, but the RKC demands I move on. Not only that, I will be working out on the road in the very near future which will be an added challenge. In any case, it’s time, so it’s time.

So I move on, Comrade, still sticking with 4 days a week and adding pull ups as part of the RKC instead of having to work it into the Crossfit days. When the schedule mentions “pulls” I am going to use pull ups as the exercise of choice.  The Heavy Light Medium thing goes like this:

Monday — Heavy presses, pulls
Tuesday — Off
Wednesday — Light presses, pulls
Thursday — Variety
Friday — Medium presses, pulls
Saturday — Variety
Sunday — Off

With 2 days off out of 7 it is a demanding schedule if you are going to add either P90X, Insanity or Crossfit workouts into the “Variety” section where you are able to do whatever you choose. So, what about the ladder? Well, it is pretty simple actually, and it looks like this:

3 Rung Ladder:

1 rep each arm
1 pullup
2 reps each arm
2 pullups
3 reps each arm
3 pullups

Depending on how many ladders you are doing it comes out to a total of 6 reps per arm x number of ladders. 3 ladders = 18 reps per arm.

5 Rung Ladder (the highest ladder)

1 rep each arm
1 pullup
2 reps each arm
2 pullups
3 reps each arm
3 pullups
4 reps each arm
4 pullups
5 reps each arm
5 pullups

Again, it’s a total of 15 reps x number of ladders.

So, quickly, back to the Heavy Medium and Light. Pavel says that the Heavy day you do all 5 rungs, medium days you do 4 and light days 3. So once you are through the first 2 weeks and up to 5 rungs, you should then adhere to the schedule.

But wait, there is more… you didn’t think you were going to get away from swings did you? The final component of the ROP is to complete swings every day. The number is up to a roll of the dice.Literally. You roll a dice to tell you how many minutes of swings to do, anywhere from 2 to 12! Also, the program calls for both two handed and one handed swings, so you may want to start practicing your one arm swing now…