When I first came up with the idea of the hour passing session I thought it was insane but I liked the idea. I worked with my friend Brandon for 6 weeks training him and getting him up to speed, and building our capacity as a team for the hour. We built up to 20 minutes and then 30 and eventually 40 minutes of continuous passing.
It was an exciting experiment and the whole reason I even conceived of the possibility was from a passing session with my friend Harinder. Harinder and I started passing a 16 kg bell on a sunny afternoon and we casually started talking about the things we were excited about in our lives, what we were building and the future. The bell finally dropped, we high fived and checked the time, to both of our surprise, 50 minutes had passed in what seemed like 15 minutes. This gave me the Idea of passing a bell for an hour as a test or right of passage, however I thought a 24kg bell would be a better weight to use for the test
Fast forward to training with Brandon, we practiced different styles of passing to prepare in addition to the two hand pass. We practiced single arm passing, and freestyle to mix it up so as not to get too repetitive and to build up the durability of our hands and the strength in our tendons and ligaments. Right around the six week mark we were both feeling good and decided that we would do the hour test just before sunset at Ponto beach in North County San Diego and that we would film it in time-lapse.
There is noting like standing in front of your partner for an hour and showing up for each other moment after moment. The struggle is real and both of you are dealing with it but neither one wants to be the person to let the other down. Truly an accomplishment of magnificent proportions. Each person is running the spectrum of emotions as the time slowly ticks away. In some moments it feels like time is cruising right along and other moments it feels like time is standing still. The feeling of appreciation and love that I felt at the end of the hour is like no other I have felt before. To know that you or he could have given up at any moment and did not, that we both chose to show up for ourselves and each other speaks volumes about the character of the person in front of you.
In a sense when you walk in to the hour test you are going into battle with your inner demons and so are they. You may not realize it when you walk into the hour, quickly it becomes apparent. The opportunity to bear witness to your partner while battling your demons is a powerful way to initiate a deep healing process that requires you to do it on your own but not alone. We are social beings and there are things we can handle together and some must handle on our own, to have someone bear witness to your healing and to create an accountability to finishing the process makes the situation more real. Many gems of wisdom have come from the hour of passing, more on that in later post, now I would like to focus on how I got to where we are with the hour of passing.
Once we completed the hour and knew it was possible I wanted to see if other people could do it. Chris Hook and Mike Scott of L.a. Golf fitness were perfect candidates. I had run into Mike at a Strong First event and he and I passed bells briefly. He invited me to come visit him and his partner Chris at there studio in L.a., so I did. We passed bells and I shared with them the idea of the 1 hour test. I had devised a 90 day training program for them to follow to prepare for the test and to get them familiar with the basic level 1 passing patterns. They sent me video every week to critique and they would implement my suggestions to get better with passing.
At the end of the 90 days they were both ready and passed there test. I was excited to implement the 90 day protocol and get people to start testing to be certified KPP instructors. As exciting as it was it proved very difficult to get people to commit to 90 days and even harder for them to find partners who could match them. I had a few people who were working towards completing the 90 day protocol and the hour passing test but is seemed to keep getting derailed by one thing or another.
Toneflowreal wanted to get certified as a KPP instructor and he had been training with me directly. Because Tone is a Flowmad, I knew it would be next to impossible for him to get a consistent 90 days with a consistent partner, I made a deal with him, get his 90 days in whatever way he could and that I would test him as his partner for the hour. Meanwhile Mike Visscher who is a beast of a man was going through partners like hotcakes and couldn't seem to find someone that could match him to complete the 90 days. I truly thought the right person would show up for him at one of our Rancho Cucamonga KPP courses. To both our dismay no one ever showed up that was an appropriate match for him. We were coming to the close of 2018 and Mike was really wanting to become certified so I extend the same offer to him that I extended to Tone.
the weekend of January 26th 2019 Mike made his way out to Albuquerque to help instruct the NM KPP workshop at Charlie's Sandbox. I had casually mentioned to Mike, before he came out, if he wanted to test while he was in ABQ, I would be happy to test him. He said "lets see how I feel when I'm out there." Mike arrived on Friday and we taught the workshop on Saturday, it was a great workshop and we all had a good time. As per tradition we went a played pinball to the wee hours of the night and didn't get to sleep until well after 3am.
Exhausted from the 4 hours of KPP and late night pinball we woke up late in the day. Having forgotten my offer, to my surprise, Mike said he wanted to test. After a couple of quick phone calls we secured Firebellz in Albuquerque owned by Zar Horton, and Charles and Dez Bustos as a venue to do our hour. At the house before we headed over I told Mike to make sure he kept his arms straight when he received the bell for the duration of the hour so as not to pop a tendon. His eyes perked up and I could see that he realized that shit was about to get real.
We got to Firebellz and took about an hour to get things set up. We had to get the mat we were passing on set up, our heart rate monitors adjusted, the cameras set up and hooked up to power. After all the commotion of getting prepared we stood on the mat facing each other with a 24kg bell. I was errantly assuming that it would be like the first hour I passed. From the moment we began I realized that this was a different situation with a different person and a whole different set of demons to face. At around 20 minutes, Mike feeling good and thinking we were much further in than we were, suggested that we throw for two hours. To which I replied "let's get one first." The hour was not an easy one and without it's own set of challenges. We were able to make it through and Mike and I both had profound experiences passing with one another. He will go into greater depth of his experience in another post.
This hour passing experience helped me to realize that the first wave of instructors will be hand picked tested by me or one of the currently certified instructors. What I saw from there is a maximum of 12 instructors all of whom have passed for an hour with one another. The data from the hour passing was interesting to me and made me curious as to what we will find as we continue to get data each hour that we pass. I am excited to get additional data on KPP as well like what is going on neurologically during the course of a sustained bout of flow. Ideally every hour of passing that occurs we will minimally collect Hr data and the data that comes with monitoring the heart rate and ideally collect data that is more telling of what else may be going on.
The next hour event is set for February 16th with Toneflowreal in Aptos California. He will be putting on one of his magic flow buss events and at the end of the flow bus weekend he will pass his hour test. I'm excited to see where this hour directs us and what the experience of passing with this flomosapien is like compared to the other two that I have experienced the hour of passing with. Thank you all for your support I love and appreciate you and look forward to growing, flowing, passing and getting to know you better. God Bless you and all of yours .