New month, new strength workout

Today I made three laps of the following circuit.  All the exercises here are done with a Smart Bell:

Tai Chi rotations, 10 reps
Orbital Circle, 12 revolutions each direction
The Russian, 12 reps
Behind-the-Head lifts, 12 reps
Pushups, 10 reps
Situps, 6 reps
The Russian with squats, 10 reps
Circle, 12 revolutions each direction
Lunges, 10 reps

I also paddled my boat today for 80 minutes.

The "Smart Bell" is another exercise tool I learned about from my friend Emerson Wickwire, the wrestling coach at my last school.  A friend of his, in fact, invented the Smart Bell: former U.S. national team wrestler Paul Widerman.  The company website is www.thinkfit.com.  I'm having trouble finding specific video examples of the exercises listed above, but there are some good general videos of Smart Bells in action here.

Just for the record, I have no endorsement agreement with Smart Bells or with any other people or companies whose products I might mention on this blog.  Indeed, there seems to be no shortage of people hawking their fitness products on the Internet and on TV infomercials--exercise balls, the Bowflex, those bungees and pulleys and stuff you can attach to a doorknob, and so on.  Each company wants to claim that its product is the last exercise tool you will ever need.  I'm skeptical of that, but I think that many of these things do have value and I enjoy incorporating as many of them as possible in my monthly exercise routines.  An exercise ball will make an appearance in a later strength workout, for instance.  Basically, if I think some fitness product is interesting, I try it, and if I like it, I keep it, and if I don't, I don't.

I got the idea of having a different strength routine each month from The Barton Mold, William T. Endicott's case study of Olympic champion flatwater kayaker Greg Barton.  Endicott writes

Barton takes two or three exercises from each of [his categories of lifting exercises] and makes up a routine consisting of 10-12 exercises, which he continues for three or four weeks. He then creates a new routine. Some exercises would stay in the routine, but a number would be different.

I do this is because I think it helps to get over plateaus. I'll change to another
exercise that works the same muscle, but maybe from a little different angle.
As soon as I start the new exercise, I can make improvements right away.
But pretty soon I reach a plateau. Then maybe I'll go back to the old one and
find that, sure, maybe I've lost a bit initially, but not much. And then after
a week or two, I've actually surpassed where I was. It's a way of tricking your
mind and body into improving beyond what it felt was a barrier.

The book also notes that Greg is less concerned with the amount of weight he lifts than with precision in his muscle movements, much like a paddler must strive for in the boat.

I first read The Barton Mold in the late 1990s, and have followed Greg's example of strength conditioning ever since.  As the month goes on, I increase the weight or the reps or the number of laps through the circuit, and I like how the workouts build to the point that they're quite taxing by the end of the month, only to "start over" when a new month begins.

The Barton Mold is available in PDF format on the International Canoe Federation website, here.  The excerpt above is from the "How Barton trains" section.