After 6-8 weeks on my own, I met with my trainer – Michelle Luna – on Saturday. I usually warm up before she arrives, but this time I asked her to evaluate my warmup and she identified problems.

Face-the-wall squats – She noticed my right knee rolling in occasionally and too much sway in my back when I tried to reach the floor. When I tightened up my form, my fingers could not come any closer than 5-6 inches from the floor. Now I’m feeling tightness in my legs that I had not been feeling. All of a sudden, I have a lot more mobility work to accomplish.

Wooden dowel shoulder stretches – She noticed that I was not holding the dowel level as I moved it from front to back. She had me watch myself in a mirror. Keeping the dowel level during movement made the effort much harder and I started getting a burn during 10 rep sets that I had never experienced before. Now I have lots more work to do with shoulder stretches.

Good Morning stretches – She noticed I was not keeping my chest out sufficiently during Good Mornings. She had me hook my dowel rod in the crook of my elbows behind my back to help me keep my chest out during Good Mornings. The change made a noticeable difference. The stretch became modestly more difficult.

My trainer reintroduced me to several more stretches/mobility drills that produced a burn in my chest and shoulders. Unfortunately, I don’t know a name for them, so won’t say more about them now.

I moved up to the 16 kg bells for my clean and presses almost two months ago and wanted an evaluation of my form. Before we got to that she, introduced me to kettlebell alternating presses using a pair of 8 kg bells. A short set of presses with these “light” weights smoked me fast. I lost interest in showing off with my 16 kg bells.

After being smoked by my 8 kg bells doing alternating presses on Saturday, I went back to my 12 kg bells for clean and press ladders in my workout on Monday. To make the presses harder, I pushed up with a count of 1 and came back down with a count of 4 (as much as I could). Coming down slow made my arms tremble after just a few sets. I may continue doing some presses with 16 kg bells, but I can obviously get a lot more out of 12 kg bells than I thought I could two months ago.