An evil Russian descended upon Seattle on January 19th. Yes, Pavel Tsatsouline was here to deliver three workshops covering flexibility, abs and strength training. There were many excited students, many laughs, and of course, many pushups. I heard a lot of positive people from a wide variety of people, ranging from martial artists to moms to personal trainers. Fortunately for my readers, I took more than six pages of notes and Pavel has generously allowed me to give you an inside look at his workshops. This is his second series of workshops that I have attended, so I was pleased to find several new additions to the program. Pavel told me that the program is always evolving as he finds new and better ways to teach the Party method.

It was a blast and informative. If any of the discussion site members get the chance to attend one of Pavel's seminars...don't hesitate. I feel we ripped him off by paying so little for the wealth of information we got (though don't take that as an excuse to raise fees). Tim H - Omaha, NE

The first in the series of two hour workshops was Relax into Stretch, covering advanced methods of flexibility training. This time around, Pavel decided to cover the free squat as the first part of the seminar. It was a sensible choice, because it requires flexibility and can be use to teach a variety of different principles, plus it is just very functional. Many people in the class were familiar with OSHA lifting recommendations, like the way they teach you at Home Depot. Do not bend at the waist, lift with your knees, etc. After saying, "you cannot lift anything heavier than a laptop that way," Pavel

showed us the right way to squat and helped many people get lower than they had ever gone before, with less pain than ever before. After some preliminary stretches, we got into our deepest squat and were told to shuffle our feet and try a few different variations before settling into the deepest and most comfortable position we could find. Now that we were in a comfortable position, we were told to let out a sigh of relief at the bottom. This triggered a relaxation response and we all dropped a few inches further down into the hole. After a few repetitions of this technique, everyone was getting deeper with greater comfort. However, Pavel warned us not to apply this technique when lifting heavy weights. One woman in the audience told Pavel, "I went a lot deeper. I have terrible knees and haven't felt a bad thing yet." Pavel took this time to tell us about Nate Morrison, a certified Kettlebell instructor and a member of the USAF Pararescue unit. Nate taught many of these techniques to his colleagues in the elite special forces units of the Air Force. After years of hard living, many of them had wrecked knees, but found tremendous relief in using these techniques to rehabilitate themselves. Pavel's recommendation was to slowly work up to one squat a day for every year of your age (40 years old= 40 squats).

Pavel, your Seattle seminars were terrific. They were definitely worth the trip from Omaha. Your teaching style is great. You kept everyone's attention, were funny, and everything was explained with enough detail that most everyone understood what they needed to do. Even though I've got most of your material, I still learned A LOT of new stuff. The exercise you had us do to relax the hip flexors was awesome and really helped me out. We also now have a few more ab exercises to be tortured with during our MA classes. I was most surprised with the PTP class. I have the tape and book and thought I was doing most things correctly, but I still learned a lot. I went from struggling with a one-arm pushup to doing one with perfect form (my body was perfectly parallel to the ground instead of leaning to one side to compensate for lack of strength). -Eric, Omaha, NE

We covered several more stretches, including the splits, but one of the highlights of the morning was the new and improved hip flexor stretch. Comrade Eric, who flew in all the way from Omaha, Nebraska to be at the seminar, was chosen as the victim for this particular exercise. Pavel had him take off his shoes and place them between his knees. Eric started in a standard sit-up position and then raised his hips until he was in a shoulder bridge. He continued to squeeze his shoes and felt a stretch in his hip flexors. He was then told to stand up, close his eyes and describe how his posture felt. It was pretty obvious that his posture had changed, his hips were farther forward and his weight seemed more centered. Eric is an experienced qigong practitioner, so he already had good body awareness, but he looked quite surprised after realizing the results of this stretch. He told me later that it was something that had very direct ties to what he was learning in qigong, which is why he and his instructor were attracted to Pavel's style of training. Next, we all tried it and gave our posture the same test. It was incredible! I often get very sore and fatigued if I stand around for too long, but it felt completely effortless after performing this stretch.

Next up was the Bullet-Proof Abs seminar, covering a variety of different methods to train the midsection. The seminar itself is an ab workout. Pavel is always cracking jokes, so the perpetual laughter alone will fry your abs. Pavel's first statement was "everything you know about ab training is wrong." He said the same thing about stretching, and yes, he is right. One man admitted that he owned an ab roller, to which Pavel replied: "You owe me 50 pushups." The man said that it worked for him… 50 more pushups. Later on, this same poor man mentioned that he performed high reps. Yep, you guessed it, 50 more. The point was, there is no need for fancy gizmos that only get in the way of learning how to perform these exercises properly. The first exercise we covered during this session was the Paradox Breathing Crunch. In this crunch, you inhale as you go up, creating a bubble of internal resistance. This not only trains your abs, but also your diaphragm, which is important for general health. It is also a very good way to unload your spine, because as you perform this crunch, it feels like your spine is elongating around that imaginary bubble in your abdomen. The first time I experienced this drill was six months ago at Pavel's previous workshop. The day before, I had been put through a lot of pain at his all-day kettlebell workshop. I had some soreness in my lower back during the stretching seminar, but it completely went away thanks in part to the paradox breathing crunch. To make this drill more eeevil, Pavel had us sniff in a few times at the top to get as much tension in the diaphragm as possible. We then pretended to pinch coins between our cheeks and push an imaginary fridge. Imagine that there is a heavy fridge in front of you and you have to push it from a crunch position. Really reach forward with your arms pushing that fridge across the floor; this will increase the tension in your lats and obliques. After adding all of these details together and mastering the feeling of this exercise, we went from having a good exercise to an exceptional one.

Next we covered both power breathing and the Janda sit-up in great detail, but since they are both covered in Bullet-Proof Abs, there is no way I can give a better description than what is already available, so I will leave it at that. One thing I will say is that Power Breathing is an excellent thing to learn, it will improve your strength in almost any lift and after some training you will be able to spit farther. Trust me on that one.

Pavel's presentation is awesome, its focused and interesting, and interspersed with really funny stuff. He does a great job of keep your attention. Didn't know I could do one arm push-ups, or pop a 250 lbs. guy of his feet and not even feel a slight strain. It was so cool. -Gianni, Seattle, WA

		The last of the three workshops was Power to the People, covering strength training. We went through an entire sequence of steps that were designed to improve our ability to generate tension. We used the pushup and the handshake as our testing platforms. After learning a variety of the tension techniques, including squeezing our butt cheeks, bracing our abs and power breathing, we were all much stronger. My training partner could only do pushups from her knees at the beginning, but by the end of the day she was performing strict pushups for reps. In addition to that, I would estimate that her grip strength improved by over 50%. That is pretty exceptional progress for only two hours of training. Pavel also gave me a pointer on my military press. He suggested that I touch my heels together and really jack up the tension in my legs. Immediately I noticed that I was pressing from a more stable platform. My friend Dave was at the first seminar I attended six months ago. Before that seminar, he could not perform push-ups, due to chronic problems with his shoulders. By the end of that seminar, he was doing pushups with his feet elevated, pushing against a wall. Six months later, he was performing handstand pushups!
We all know how effective the Party's methods are, but what I wasn't prepared for was how well Pavel organized his material to be understood by even beginners. I also thought that it was especially cool that he takes time and effort between sessions to talk to people and answer any other questions they may have. -Ram V., Seattle, WA

The one common theme of today's workshops and any of Pavel's training materials is that mastery of small details is what separates the best from the rest. Pavel's teaching abilities really makes these techniques accessible, even to people who have never done any serious strength training. These workshops are well worth the price of admission to anyone that is fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend one. I highly recommend taking the trip, you will walk away with more knowledge, more strength and you are guaranteed to have a great time sharing a few laughs with the Evil Russian.