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Published: March 11th 2007
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Steve is a twenty-something Kenyan acrobat, a Rastafarian world-traveller with a wife and 7-month old baby. Just off the highway between Mombasa and Malindi, in the growing sub-urban settlement of Shanzu, Steve has set-up an amazing home-made gym. We met each other in my first week in Kenya, and we really saw eye to eye on this whole fitness thing. Since then we've been training, teaching, and learning from one another. Saturday was my last chance to workout there, so I figured I'd take some pictures and tell you all the story.
The Quest for Fitness I've been a fitness nut for at least 3 years now, and before that I was just fit. I think about exercise every time I pass a park or a beach or a climbable tree.
At home, I found the key to staying in great shape was solid practice. Functional, varied, intense workouts--everyday. However, travelling around the world has not made this easy to maintain.
In the first place, I have no gym. Secondly, no equipment other than my body and the things I can improvise (gets boring quick). Thirdly, I'm always on the move--never know what new mission might
come up or what new bug might hit me with a week of diarhea. In retrospect, I've been soft.
But I'm all the time trying to combat my softness. That's why meeting Steve was such a boon.
Steve's Setup Steve comes from a whole village of professional and aspiring acrobats. His father was an acrobat, his uncles are acrobats. Acrobatics has taken he and his family all around the globe, and in the meantime, they've learned a lot about training.
Steve himself has practiced bodybuilding, powerlifting, running, and a lot of calisthenics, not just acrobatic gymnastics. Through all this, he's learned some things about training that most people don't know.
He put together a setup remarkably similar to the home-gym setup I had back in Seattle, and the ones used by Crossfit nuts all over the U.S. His backyard has pullup bars, dip bars, home-made freeweights, bench-press, rings/trapeze for gymnastic work, a climbing rope, and number of other improvised thingamajigs.
It's pretty sweet.
Learning and Teaching From my first day working out at Steve's gym, I was excited. Not only does the guy have all the gear I need
to really enjoy myself, but we agree on the basic tenants of physical fitness, such as:
- Focus on the entire body.
- Vary your exercise and sport.
- Concentrate on functional work and compound movements.
- Go big. An intense workout is better than a dozen low-impact workouts.
- Train your weakness until they become strengths.
- It's not how much weight you're lifting, it's how you lift it.
However, that doesn't mean we know all the same stuff. Steve has been able to teach me a lot of new exercises and give me a lot of tips, especially with the gymnastics. In the meantime, I've taught him about the Olympic lifts and their bulding-blocks: various cleans, jerks, presses, overhead squats, etc.
He's got people pouring in to train with him day and night, and I'm always teaching somebody something. Working together here-and-there has helped us to focus and refine the things we're teaching others.
One of the finest moments was getting together a couple weeks ago to train more than 100 elementary-school students. Some of them are keen soccer players, others runners, and the rest probably just wanted to have some fun exercise.
Their teacher invited us to do a session with the kids and we really put it together.
Just imagine how much fun
you'd have making 100 little-kids sprint around a field and do air squats until they fall over. 😊
Saturday's Workout We started Saturday off with some stretching and basic exercise on the gymnastic rings. Then it was into the Crossfit Warmup.
We did 3 rounds each, of the following:
- Samson stretches, once each side.
- Overhead squats (bar only), 10 reps.
- Incline situps, 10 reps.
- Improvised back stretches (you'd have to see them), 10 reps.
- Decline pushups, 10 reps.
- Pullups, 10 reps.
- Dips, 10 reps.
- Handstand pushups, 10 reps.
Getting cooked in the Kenyan heat, and breathing heavy, we moved into some weightlifting.
Steve's got a weak spot when it comes to the Overhead Squat, so we did some training on that one. I managed to hoist 60 kilos of poured-concrete stones up into the air and knock out a few sets of ten. Steve learned to deadlift, power-clean, and push-jerk the weight up into position, then get a couple reps of
down-to-the-bottom Overhead Squats.
Somewhere in between squats and bench, I got light-headed and had to lie down. Caught my breath, had some cold water, and I was back up at it.
We did medium-weight bench press (a little more than my bodyweight, I think). 5 sets each, with me doing 10s and Steve knocking out 20s. The last reps were extremely narrow grip to hit the triceps.
We finished up the physical workout with some more stretches and exerises of the inverted, aerial-gymnastic sort, then spent an hour or two playing with the 7 month old baby, Christian, while Steve's wife fixed up lunch.
After a big batch of fried fish and Ugali (Kenyan cornmeal staple-food), we saw Chris off to sleep and headed into town to read about fitness on the internet, at www.crossfit.com.
It was my last chance to work-out there, but Steve's gym will be just fine without me. I've had some fun, did some great work, and left Steve and his guys with a few more intellectual resources than they had before (especially with all the stuff I showed him on Crossfit).
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sam
non-member comment
Would like to come and train.
Seems good.Where are you located from shanzu teachers