Buying Kettlebells 101

So you’ve done some reading about kettlebells and are interested to try them. But once you’ve started having a look around you soon start to see that there are so many different options you have no idea where to start.

Quite frankly, kettlebells are hot in the fitness industry. Sadly, as with most hot things in the fitness industry, the number of people who are actually knowledgeable about a product is quite limited. In a lot of cases, even many of those who proclaim to have been using kettlebells for some time have not been focused solely on their use as they utilise ropes, sandbags, sleds, bars, etc. with their clients too – so how many genuine hours of training have they got with bells?

And this leads to a knock on effect – little knowledge of their use leads to little knowledge about what makes a good piece of equipment.

For instance, there is a great fallacy in fitness circles that a smooth handle is a better handle. Nothing could be further from the truth. The simple reality is that if the finish on the handle is too smooth it will become slippery. If you are training for muscular endurance by doing complexes or many swings or snatches you’re going to start to sweat soon and your hands will lose grip on the handle. The next step will be for you to chalk up and continue training. While that may seem like a good short-term fix the repeated use of chalk will dry your hands making tearing the skin even more likely – hardly a good long-term strategy. The goal should be to minimise the use of chalk at all times.

So the solution then is a handle that isn’t overly smooth. What has led to this misunderstanding is that in the early days of cheaper bells being made, their production process wasn’t high quality and bells often came out with burrs and rough edges on the underside of the handle necessitating sanding or filing the handle once delivery had been made. Obviously these burrs can cause skin tears and damage to the hands. So what has happened is that people took a sound piece of advice – make sure the handle of your bell is free from rough metal edges – and think that what it really means is have a handle that is silky smooth.

The fix is simple – buy a quality made bell that has a handle that is moulded as part of the bell. Most kettlebells on the market have a handle that is separate to the body and is welded on at the end of the manufacturing process. Top quality kettlebells such as Dragon Door kettlebells are moulded from a single mould – no welds to cause rough spots, and as an added bonus no weak spots at the welds.

Additionally Dragon Door kettlebells are deliberately manufactured to have a slight texturing to their surface. This texturing increases the surface area slightly and means less chalk is needed for training. While they may seem rough to raw novices, experienced trainees will recognise the benefits of this type of surface as it aids grip and training longevity.

The issue of welding the handle onto the bell can eventually become a safety issue as the bell ages. Have a look at the video below of Master RKC Dave Whitley talking about the cracked welds of a 32kg kettlebell and the potential safety risks that come with it.

The smoothness of the bell also comes into question when various different coatings are used to finish the bell before sale. Most commonly bells are either painted or powder coated. This usually leads to a nice looking finish. For about five minutes until you actually train with them for the first time.

A painted or powder coated bell will start to chip the moment you touch it to another hard surface – usually another bell, if training with doubles, or even the ground if you train on a hard surface. This process has the advantage of making kettlebells cheaper to produce but leads to it’s own host of problems. The chipping eventually leads to the handle becoming rough, which again makes hands likely to tear. If you’re a professional trainer it is important that your equipment looks clean and well maintained at all times – very few clients will want to train with kettlebells like the ones shown below.

This is what most Australian made kettlebells look like!

Dragon Door is currently the only company in the world to have taken the finish of their kettlebells to a new level to ensure quality of finish for the lifetime of their use. By using a patented eCoat process Dragon Door kettlebells will stay chip free, rust free and looking good for the duration of their life.  As an added bonus to your bells maintaining their great appearance you also get the peace of mind that comes with using a bell that won’t eventually tear your hands and wind up needing replacement.

Like with most things in life – quality and experience should be prized highly when looking for advice or equipment. Dragon Door is the group that started the modern kettlebell movement and are the only group worldwide that have continued pushing forward, constantly looking to increase both the quality of their merchandise and training systems. Now based firmly in Australia, with a growing group of well-trained instructors it’s the right time to take the next step forward with your kettlebell training. By seeking out quality goods as well as top quality kettlebell instruction you’ll find you make consistent progress, avoid injury and minimise time off due to hand tears or injuries caused by poorly manufactured equipment.

Press Specialization Program 1

The following is one of the specialized press plans from my upcoming Beast Tamer book. Obviously these are not routines for beginners to kettlebell training.

Press Specialization Program 1 (5 days per week).

This program is designed for those who can withstand some serious volume. It uses a Bench Press program from Power to the People Professional along with a Deadlift/ Pistol plan two days per week. For people like me this plan works great. One of the biggest problems people have is in identifying whether they are suited to what I think of as volume training or intensity training. The easy way to tell is if you’ve been successful during your life in things that take minutes or seconds? For instance, if you’ve been a swimmer and were successful at events that lasted two or more minutes, ran middle or long distance well or even fight in competitions such as BJJ where matches can be 5-10 minutes continuous you are a volume person most likely. If you’re at the other end of the scale and were good as a sprinter, jumper, thrower or either kind of competitive weight lifter you are an intensity person.

I do far better on high volume plans than I do on high intensity plans and have used this plan with a number of people who match up with my background. Choose your plan accordingly.

This 5-day per week plan is laid out like this –

Monday – Press and Pull Ups

Tuesday – Deadlift and jumps

Wednesday – Press and Pull Ups

Thursday – Rest

Friday – Press and Pull Ups

Saturday – Deadlifts and Pistols.

I’ll start with the Deadlift portion of the program as that is the easy part.

Week	Tuesday	Saturday
1.	DL 5×5 1 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 3 x 5 DL 3,2,1 x 3
2.	DL 5×5 1 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 3 x 5 DL 3,2,2 x 3
3.	DL 5×5 2 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 3 x 5 DL 3,2,1 x 3
4.	DL 4 x 4 2 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 3 x 5 DL 3,2,2 x 3
5.	DL 4 x 4 3 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 4 x 5 DL 3,2,1 x 3
6.	DL 4 x 4 3 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 4 x 5 DL 3,2,2 x 3
7.	DL 3 x 3 3 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 5 x 5 DL 3,2,1 x 3
8.	DL 3 x 3 3 x 5 single leg box jumps	Pistol 5 x 5 DL 3,2,2 x 3

For the single leg box jumps only perform the concentric – no rebounding or turning these into depth jumps.

The Saturday deadlift sessions – as reps decrease the weight will increase. For more information on maximizing the use of this DL cycle see Power to the People professional p. 163/4 The Surovetsky cycle.

Press and Pull Up

Week	Monday	Wednesday	Friday
1.	3,5,3 x 3	2,3,2 x 1	3,5,3 x 2
2.	2,3,2 x 2	3,5,3 x 1	2,3,2 x 3
3.	2,3,2 x 3	3,5,3 x 1	2,3,2 x 2
4.	3,5,3 x 2	2,3,2 x 1	3,5,3 x 3
5.	3,3, x 2	2,2,2 x 3	3,3,3 x 1
6.	2,2 x 2	2,2 x 2	3,3,3 x 1
7.	2,2,2 x 1	3,3 x 2	3,3,3 x 3
8.	2,2,2,2 x 1	3,3 x 3	2,2 x 3

This is a modified for kettlebells Chernisev Bench Press program, again from Power to the People Professional (p. 111). Here’s how it works –

If there is only one series to be done – indicated by a “x 1” for each number of reps listed you will go up a weight. For example, on week 1 Wednesday where you are supposed to lift 2,3,2 x 1 your weight selection might go like this –

32kg x 2

36kg x 3

40kg x 2

However, on days where more than one series is listed you stick with a given weight for the entire allocation of reps before going up a weight for the following series.

So week 1 Monday might look like this –

32kg x3, 32kg x 5, 32kg x 3

36kg x 3, 36kg x 5, 36kg x 3

40kg x 3, 40kg x 5, 40kg x 3.

Obviously starting weights will need to be carefully thought out for you to be successful using this method.

After the 8 weeks, take a full week off and repeat the cycle. You will find following a structured program helpful in achieving your kettlebell training goals. For more information keep your eyes peeled for the book or contact us at http://www.dragondooraustralia.com.

Don’t forget that for American peeps I’ll be in the US in November and talking about all this material live. I’ll be at ProFitness in MN on November 10 with Team Leader Delaine Ross, and I’m in La at Southbay Kettlebells on November 15.

Random Thoughts on Training

Now that the new website is up (www.dragondooraustralia.com) I am back to having at least a few minutes each week to scratch myself. What this means is that I end up lying sleepless in bed at night while a million training related thoughts run through my head. In all honesty that is why I started a blog in the first place – I found the action of putting words onto paper (or virtual paper as the case may be) made my mind go quieter and I could sleep better. But now I’ve got some time to myself again my mind has started whirring away and some thoughts that all relate to training, but not a single theme have all been vying for my attention. So in an effort to get a decent night’s sleep tonight here’s what’s been in my mind –

1. Isolation Work

I feel like I’m about to commit RKC heresy by saying this, but sometimes isolation IS warranted. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

A good example of this is in the pull up. Many females in particular struggle to initiate the pull up simply because they lack the elbow flexion strength to bend the arms even slightly with nearly 100% of body weight. You know what would help that? Bicep Curls. Really. Gaining some strength, or even some understanding about how to recruit these muscles will help perform pull ups enormously.

While I’m on the pull up theme I’ll add that often the finish is difficult (at least in the RKC where we expect a chin up to end with your chin actually over the bar). The final phase of the pull up requires a difficult combination of a pull over and a row. And adding in some sets of pull overs, Dan John’s batwings, face pulls, etc. to your pull workouts will make a big difference.

A second great example of this is the addition of direct calf work. The functional fitness crowd will be screaming into their TRXs right now but it’s true. If you’re a runner having a set of strong calves and plantar fascia is going to be helpful. The calf is responsible for absorbing 200-300% of body weight eccentrically during the landing phase and the plantar fascia takes the full brunt of that to keep the foot stable during the step off phase. In a single kilometre of running you will land anywhere from 800-1200 steps (depending on speed). How many people do you know who can do 400 triple body weight calf raises and not be in pain the next day?

When you start to look at athletic events that have running as part of them – tennis, football, etc. – where direction change is important, it becomes an even bigger necessity. Looking at the number of athletes that suffer knee pain consider that Shirley Sahrmann says this, “…knee pain can often be helped by increasing plantar flexion activity from heel strike to foot flat”. Plantar flexion, for the non-geeks is the action of pointing your toes, or maintaining the foot extended position such as when you sprint and need to stay on the balls of your feet. In an athlete requiring direction changes the muscles of the calves are also responsible for stabilizing the ankle and forming a rigid platform to transfer energy. An energy leak here and you may end up collapsed somewhere else – ACL tear anyone?

In the FMS system you are told that the “bottom 4 give you the top 3”. What this means is that the top 3 are the more complex movements and often you can get an increase in them by fixing a component, simpler, part.

We can take the same mentality and apply it to movement, or to exercises. For instance, without a good mobile ankle something in the rest of my leg, either above or below that point, is going to have to compensate. So either my foot is going to play up or my knee and/or hip will. If we work to regain those movement patterns through joint mobility exercises such as the excellent Z Health ankle series we can often get a quick increase in a wide variety of movements. Last night I had the time to re-FMS a client as we have just started a round of PT outside of group training. She moves very well, trains well but has always had difficulty squatting. Turns out she’s only got about 25-30% of normal ankle flexion. This means she has to squat with almost completely vertical shins and that she has to sit way back to squat making it hard to keep her torso up. A few simple ankle mobility exercises should make a big difference in no time.By going after this one small thing we can get a big result without having to spend the time trying to fix the million things that are going on in the squat.

So don’t dismiss isolation training even though it is out of vogue. There is plenty of reasons to add it in to address weak points and boost overall performance. Even in a rehab setting it can be useful to begin in isolation to teach recruitment before integrating movements.

2. Simplify for Goals

At some point in training, sooner or later, you will stop progressing or hurt yourself. If you’re me, the first usually precedes the latter by 2-3 weeks. In that time i used to train harder and try to push through it.

Training isn’t a linear progression. It waves up and down, with peaks and valleys, in a natural and organic way. Viewed over time, it should appear as if it is a linear progression, but when looked at on a small scale the ups and downs of days and even months can be visible.

So what to do when you stagnate? When you can no longer progress? That is the time to take a good hard look at what you’re doing and simplify it. Often in training we try to do a little of everything and end up doing nothing well. Going back to my pull up example – if my aim is to do, let’s say, the 24kg men’s pull up for RKCII and right now I can only do a 12kg, I have some work to do. So what benefit is it if I do many deadlifts prior to my pull up workout? While they may help me gain maximal strength we’re now talking about making my strength specific for a task and ultimately I will need to remove things from my program that aren’t pull ups.

When I was Olympic lifting my program was simple – one main lift, either full clean or full snatch, one assistance exercise (usually a pull) and squat. Very simple. My two days a week of Olympic lifts on a solid, simple program saw me beat my 15 year old PR in the squat, clean and snatch.

The same holds true for combat sports. In fights things often go bad. You hit someone with what you thought was a solid shot and they shrug it off. This leads to all sorts of mental issues as you start to wonder if you can hit hard enough to hurt your opponent, are they too strong for you, are you tired…and all this makes a fighter tense and tense fighters tire quickly. A good fighter will go back to their simple plan –  a solid one, two down the middle can get things back on track. Even something as simple as a good leg kick to disrupt the opponent’s rhythm can bring the fight back into your game.

Simplifying training is easy – as Dan John says – keep the goal the goal. If your eventual goal is Beast Tamer, something I get a lot of emails about, you should probably be close to doing two of the three lifts at least before you worry about putting it together. You see, if you can’t hit at least one, but even better two, of the three lifts, you’re not ready to think about Beast Tamer yet. Your goal is to get at least two of the lifts to the 48kg. If you haven’t done that yet you need to simplify your goal to just getting strong enough to perform the lifts.

3. Single Leg Work

One of the things that has always concerned me is body weight. Having competed for most of my life in sports where it is normal to weigh in I’ve always wanted to be as strong as possible while being at the right weight for me. I’ll get to body weight as an issue in a bit, but one of the best ways to keep weight down and strength high is single leg work.

One of the main arguments against single leg work is that you can’t teach the body to handle massive loads on single leg because of the lower stability. But that is exactly why single leg work can help you stay light – because you’re not being forced to endure carrying big loads such as in the back or front squat your body isn’t forced to pack extra meat on to deal with it. There is a reason why every single body building authority in the world says to squat if you’re looking to gain weight. That bar across your back with a few wheels on it will pack mass onto you faster than you’ll believe if you’re doing it right.

Along with those of us who don’t actually want to get bigger for weight class reasons there are also some of us who, as we age, no longer are keen to stack on extra weight. There’s a lot to be said for staying lean into your second half of life – easier on the joints, the heart and seems to have a positive carryover to your endurance and work capacity too. And single leg work is ideal for this. There’s also the additional benefit of single leg work seeming to address many qualities at once that make it a good addition to training. A pistol will highlight ankle flexibility restrictions, hip stability and mobility as well as the ability to generate tension. Going back to my simplification thought, it’s obvious that I can tick many boxes with just this single move.

Along with being a great way to merge strength and mobility together people often forget that these moves can be trained for maximal strength too. Ian King was the first guy to write about this back in the late 90s and now there are many who have taken his work and made it more widely known. Given the way the CNS works we can actually encourage the legs to deliver more force when trained singly, as the message from the brain is not divided into two limbs. When you hear of star athletes like some of the Australian track cycling girls performing Bulgarian Squats with 160kg for triples it makes you realize exactly what is possible with these moves.

4. Body weight

As a society we are getting larger and larger. Note I didn’t say stronger and stronger. Increases in body weight, in my opinion, are only beneficial if they come with a simultaneous increase in strength or performance.

For instance, at U85kg I wrestle well. I am able to use my fitness to impact on matches and am strong enough to not feel overpowered by anyone. But at U90kg, while I am stronger I cannot fight as hard through a match. The extra few kilos do not help my performance at all. At the same time, if I am over 90kg I can barely do pull ups. Yet at mid 80s I am able to do reps with much additional load. Running is the same, in fact, for running I am better at low 80s, about 82 or 83kg. At that weight I am faster and can run better (swim better too, although cycling suffers).

My measurement now for whether a weight is good for me or not is the RKCII test standards – if I can’t do the pull up or my 1/2 body weight press then I am too heavy.

As we age there is a lot to be said for staying lean and mean. From better heart health to better joints to helping make you more efficient at moving around from a cardiovascular perspective, dropping a little weight is a good thing. Research shows that people over 40 who are overweight or obese tend to stay that way for the remainder of their lives. That’s as good a reason as any to make sure you keep your body weight down – to ensure you don’t end up obese in the second half of your life. As long as performance isn’t decreasing during this weight loss then you are on the right path. Keeping strength, or even improving it, is a sign that muscle is not being lost. This has a positive effect on metabolism and hormone production. Not to mention you’ll look and feel better too!

The Road to the RKC

Not that long ago – just over two years in fact – I made my first pilgrimage to the land of the strong to attend the RKC and learn as much as I could about kettlebell training. On that trip I had next to no idea what to expect, how hard it might be, what everyone would be like or even if I was good enough to pass.

Over the last couple of years things have really changed quite a bit for me professionally and my feelings towards and understanding of the RKC system has changed considerably. With so many Australians now poised to take on this challenge I thought some tips might help.

When I went back in June ’09 I had spent the first half of the year preparing. I had been training with kettlebells only since mid-’06 and my only break was shoulder surgery for a few months in late ’07. Interestingly, it was that injury that had made me first look into kettlebells in the first place and encouraged by the results I had seen prior to surgery I opted to get rid of all my other strength training and just delve into Pavel’s system and see what could be gained. The kettlebell quickly became the only tool I needed – perfect for my garage PT set up as they took little space, and my initial outlay of just over $1000 meant I had enough kettlebells to train up to six people at a time, although due to space that was never more than four.

The initial results from clients were promising, although due to my lack of understanding with kettlebells they could have been much better. By this time I was back to pressing a 24kg for sets of five and finished the Rites of Passage pretty easily including weighted Chin Ups. I did the best I could in terms of seeking out advice from people held up as experts in kettlebell training in Australia. Not once did any of them touch me for technique help. What’s funny about that is that after Day 1 at the RKC I felt like I knew nothing at all about the something even as simple as the Swing. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

In training for the RKC I had no real idea what I was going to be exposed to. Apart from literally two sessions with these “expert” instructors I was on my own. At the time there were only six RKCs in the country and none easily available. I spent a lot of time on the Dragon Door forum. I didn’t post much but I read everything. By this point I had bought, owned and read cover to cover multiple titles – Enter the Kettlebell, Super Joints, Beyond Bodybuilding, Naked Warrior, Kettlebells From the Ground Up and Viking Warrior Conditioning (and think that anyone really serious about attending the RKC should own all of those except for VWC). One of the biggest things I really didn’t understand until quite close to the event was that the RKC weekend is largely double kettlebell work. I owned a 40kg bell that I would do Two Hand Swings and Get Ups with as a warm up each day, but there’s a world of difference between Two Hand Swings with a 40kg and Double Swings with 24s.

From about three months out I switched almost exclusively to Brett Jones’ RKC preparation advice. My only downfall was I didn’t spend enough time with double 24s. I remember when they made us start using doubles on the weekend and after my first set of Double Swings I knew I was in for a long weekend. One of the problems with preparing for the RKC back then was you couldn’t find Dragon Door bells anywhere. It was only once I’d passed and became the distributor that this was changed. So I trained for the RKC with Pro-Grade bells as that was the best I could find. To be honest, a lot of the comments people make about different bells is based on what the sales people will say to try to sell products, but here’s the simple truth – the biggest difference is that the skinny handles on the competition bells won’t build grip strength. You will suffer when you go to the RKC if you’ve been training on skinny handled bells. At the end of Day 2 I remember not being able to even turn the door handle to my room because my grip was so fried! I ordered a burger for dinner so I wouldn’t have to use cutlery.

Somehow I passed the weekend. Looking back I’m not so sure I would have passed me but Senior RKC Shaun Cairns said that he had never seen anyone endure testing with more heart than I had. Given I felt like I was holding the bells in my fingernails because my hands were torn, my grip shot and the tightening of my hamstring had led to record levels of stiffness in my body I’ll take any compliment I can get – although I strongly suspect that was his way of saying I looked awful but displayed mental strength beyond my technical ability. Kind of like being told you have a nice personality. It took two weeks for my hands to heal and my body to sort itself out after the trip. It’s taken two years for some of those lessons to really sink in, mostly because I wasn’t yet experienced enough to understand exactly what was meant when certain things were said.

Fast forward to now and things have changed for me. For starters, double 24s don’t pose any issues for me – even Double Snatches. The time spent practicing my skills, gaining strength and technique hasn’t been wasted.

I’ve come to understand a lot of technical detail within the movements a lot more. The RKC aren’t really about kettlebells. On a very shallow level that is what is visible, but like a duck swimming there is an awful lot more going on beneath the surface that our customers don’t ever need to know. For instance, within the Get Up there are nine different movement patterns that are being worked on. One of these – rolling – is linked to the ability to run, kick, punch, throw and a host of other athletic activities. Without even seeing someone kick, throw or run, I can look at their Get Up, at the very first movement within it, and instantly know whether or not those people are able to do those movements well. So while my clients are “training with kettlebells” or “doing Get Ups” I am working on the rotary stability, fixing their primitive movement patterns and helping them to run, throw, punch or kick better. All without actually getting into the skills of those individual movements.

Having sent people to the RKC now as well as having assisted at a couple I have a much better understanding of how to get people ready for the event. Here’s the best path to take –

Do the HKC.

I have to laugh when I get told by people that because they’ve done “Level 1 and 2 of the…instructor course” that they are somehow too good to attend the HKC. Especially when I am yet to see anyone who has attended those certifications turn up and pass the RKC on the day. In fact, I was present this year when two AKI’s both couldn’t manage to pass the RKC over the weekend. The pass rate for the RKC for those who have previously attended the HKC is far higher than for those who just go straight to the RKC. Not least of all is getting to see exactly how high the expectations are and that the testing is very real. Because unlike other certifications you won’t walk out the door with a piece of paper certifying you just because you handed some money over. Dragon Door have very high and very well known standards for being the leader in this field and take that seriously. As Master RKC Andrea du Cane says, “if I wouldn’t trust them to train my mother then they don’t pass”.

The best bit about attending the HKC is that the technique standard for the movements tested is the same as at the RKC, with the exception of it being single bell versus double bell. If you can pass a movement at the HKC, once you gain strength, you will be fine for RKC.

Meet with an RKC.

There are more and more RKCs in Australia. In fact, at the April RKC next year there will be more Australians present as students than there were total RKCs when I went in the first place! Not only that but we now have an RKCII – Shannon Scullin – as well as a Team Leader, along with a handful of CK FMS qualified RKCs. In other words – high quality training is more available now than it ever has been in Australia with kettlebells. And kettlebell training in Melbourne has never been healthier with more RKCs here than (nearly) the rest of the country combined!

RKCs have been there and done it. They know what is expected and understand how hard it is to fly for thirty hours and train for three days straight jet lagged and sore. They know what it’s like to try to work your way up to the Snatch Test. Best of all – they know the standards inside out. With a tool box of progressions, correctives and an entire system of movement to use an RKC should have you training well in no time.

Educate yourself.

There’s no reason why an RKC candidate shouldn’t own most of the Dragon Door library. Looking at my book shelf right now I see thirty-six different Dragon Door books and DVDs on my shelf as well as all my manuals (RKC x 2, RKCII, CK FMS, MMI). That’s a lot of reading and knowledge in all that. No wonder that I often flick through things and pick up some completely new tidbit that I would swear wasn’t there before. The RKC manual is especially notable in that respect. I have a couple of different editions, both similar while being different enough that there is a wealth of different information in them. Every time I pick one up I find something new, something I’d forgotten or some new way to apply something I already know. Because when you really start to dig into the RKC system what you see is that it IS a system. It’s not a random collection of some books on kettlebells, some others on flexibility and a few more on power lifting. Everything is everything, and like with my Get Up example before, I can take any piece of that information and give it to you in any number of different ways to get a result.

Without having that education background the best thing you can do to prepare is, again, to get yourself in front of an RKC. When it comes to kettlebell training RKCs are at the top of the tree for a very good reason. High standards, constant need to stay current through re-certification and a community of like minded people who are also pushing forward to learn more, to become better trainers. Getting in front of an RKC will serve two purposes at once – having a set of extra objective eyes look at you to pick apart your technique as well as help to educate you on what is lacking in your training. Even now, having been to fourteen different RKC events in the last two years and being promoted to Team Leader I take every chance I can to get people to check my form. Every HKC I always make sure to spend some time training with the Senior or Master attending and will always ask my RKCII training partner how my form is on lifts. Objectivity is rare and very difficult to develop for yourself – an extra set of eyes, that come complete with a knowledge base is an excellent way to learn about kettlebells.

Don’t be complacent.

The RKC standard is high – both technically and in terms of strength expectation. Men will be expected to mostly train with AT LEAST double 24s for the majority of the weekend. It is the School of Strength and we expect our instructors to be able to demonstrate that. Pressing a 24kg bell a few times, single handed, at home is a lot different than being expected to do five perfect reps with double 24s after a weekend of hard work. On top of that the Press section of the course runs for about an hour and a half – so you need to be able to handle double 24s for up to an hour and a half just to get through that section! No matter how ready you think you are there will always be a point on the weekend when you wish you had trained more in preparation. I like to tell me students that i would like them to be able to relax and enjoy the weekend rather than collapse on the floor, lungs heaving, heart pounding in their ears and missing everything that Pavel is talking about. So we make sure that they are beyond ready.

There are many studs that turn up to the RKC. Big, strong, athletic guys. It’s funny how most of them will be humbled by the weekend and the ones who end up standing out are not the ones you initially thought were amazing based off looks alone. I believe that the RKC favors “Avises”, a term stolen from former SEAL Team 6 head honcho Dick Marchinko, used because at the time the Avis slogan was “we try harder”. Because when you’re tired and it’s late in the day we want the guy or girl who grits their teeth and guts out perfect reps. There’s a reason for this too – as a trainer the days are long. Some days you’ll be eye-wateringly tired and sore from your own training, yet you’ll still have to demonstrate perfect technique for your clients. If you can’t they’ll just start doing the wrong thing too, just like you showed them. So our standard stays high, to protect them (and you) from injuring themselves with poor form. Every single rep in training is an attempt to make it better than the one before. We very much care about form and detail and technique. After all, as Master RKC David Whitley says, “a thousand crappy reps is still a thousand crappy reps”. Would you care if you had a thousand dollars in notes but someone had ripped them all in half? You bet you would, and exercise technique is no different – rip it in half and you get NONE of the benefits, just like ripping money in half it’s worthless if all the detail isn’t present.

The RKC takes enormous steps forward every year. As it gains in popularity this will actually accelerate as more people become attracted to it. Some of these will be gifted like Gray Cook, Dan John and their ilk and these people bring great wisdom and depth of understanding to all of us within the community. At the same time I know none of the Seniors and Masters are resting on their laurels – I know I’m not. Every day I get a chance to do a rep better than the day before, to teach something better, to help another person which in turn teaches me more. If you want to be part of something that is so far in front of the competition it’s not even a race, then by all means come and join us – but take your training seriously, because we take our standards very seriously. Work hard, educate yourself, spend time training with the right people and we’ll welcome you into our club.

Kettlebell Training in Australia

Right now in Australia things are poised for a very big change. As usual we’re a little behind trends in the US so it is not surprising that we are coming to the big change in the kettlebell roller coaster a little more slowly.

Roughly ten years ago in the US Dragon Door and Pavel Tsatsouline created the world’s first kettlebell instructor certification – the Russian Kettlebell Certification (RKC). Since then it has blossomed to be recognized as the world leader in kettlebell training. In the ten years since the first course was run there are now over 1500 currently accredited instructors in  more than 20 countries around the world. In that same time Pavel has become the clearly recognized leader of functional strength training as well as kettlebell training worldwide.

In Australia, due to distance, there have been a number of people who have simply not bothered to attend training with the world leader, but instead have chosen to read some books and proclaim themselves experts. Going to these people for your training education is like learning to fight from someone who watches the UFC but doesn’t train themselves – white belts trying to teach advanced skills.

This watering down of technique, strength and understanding becomes apparent when I hear people saying things like “you can’t get strong with kettlebells, you need a barbell for that”. In the words of friend and fellow RKC Team Leader Max Shank “If you can’t get strong with kettlebells you just need bigger kettlebells”. The only way in the world you can’t gain strength with kettlebells is if you are already so strong that the biggest kettlebell is well below your maximum for a lift. Given a pair of the biggest bells weighs up to 96kg, and I don’t have a single client who can lift one once, don’t they have plenty of room for strength improvement just using kettlebells?

Because the thing is the body doesn’t recognize what form resistance comes in. Actually, it may not even recognize the resistance itself, merely the amount of tension that it is forced to generate to deal with it. This again is another stand out aspect of the RKC system – we have drills designed to teach people how to maximize tension within the body. In other words, we can take a light weight and make it feel heavy. The interesting thing about this is by using these drills that maximize tension we are stronger, but we are also safer. Many people believe that a maximum lift has to have a necessary degree of danger of in it – that to push beyond your norm you have to accept some risks. I have to be honest and say that I don’t believe that to be true. And if you look at Dimas’s world record snatch attempt shown below in slow motion I think you’ll agree that at no point does he ever look in danger or that the lift is anything but safe for him.

One of the hardest parts about spreading the word of kettlebell training in Australia has been the sheer amount of bad press that I have had to overcome in regards to kettlebell lifting. For instance, people believe that deadlifitng is dangerous. Yet, in WorkSafe education they teach people to deadlift to pick boxes and other objects from the floor. How can it be safe in one area and not in another? The lack of competent teaching at Certificate IV in Fitness level has added another layer of mess to all this. If a lecturer proclaims the deadlift to be an advanced exercise, their students, not knowing any better, will believe this to be so. So instead of teaching people how to safely hinge, tighten and perform this basic lift correctly it remains ignored. And this is despite Dr. Stuart McGill’s book on Ultimate Back Performance having been printed over seven years ago and heralded as a ground breaking “must have” book for anyone interested in resistance training, rehab or performance. Seven years and the message hasn’t sunk in yet – not only is deadlifitng good for you if done correctly, but the major cause of lower back problems is not one of lack of maximal strength, rather one of lack of adequate strength endurance to cope with repetitive loading.

Do you know how to get in tons of reps of a hip hinge movement in a short period of time? Kettlebell swings. It’s that easy. They could be the fountain of youth for all their properties – strengthening the back, blasting stubborn body fat and increasing cardiac health. Of course, you’d have to be able to do these “Hardstyle” to get these same benefits. Compare the video below of RKC Team Leader Phil Scarito swinging to a local GS competitor’s swing demonstration video.

 

In fairness, the GS competitor is highly skilled at her sport, in fact has the rank of Master of Sport (and may actually be world champion, I think). But the problem is not with the way she swings, it is what YOU will likely do when you attempt to do this swing. If you look at her back – the lower back remains neutral, the only rounding is of the upper back. That’s actually ok as the thoracic spine is designed to do that. However, most people will not have the control or skill she does at this and by removing tension from the body in this manner are only setting themselves up for injury down the road (as well she is using an 8kg bell – or roughly 50% of what she would normally use in training).

Tying this back to McGill’s work, the relevance of the deadlift and how to use the feeling of the deadlift – of recruitment and tension – to increase safety as well as train us to bulletproof our back, there’s only one choice. The RKC system delivers all these benefits – safety, performance, functional movement – all in one package. Because there is no point in trying to make our clients follow the techniques of world champions. If they had the make up and training history to be world champions they likely already would be! What sets the world champions apart is an ability to do things most of us cannot. Trying to emulate that in our own training is a recipe for disaster.

Consider all the things that go into one single successful lift – the hours and hours of training, the genetic ability to not only withstand that training but to be able to do it well in the first place (as all sports have a body type that will be especially suited to the sport) as well, obviously, as the massive amounts of skill with the lift itself borne from tens of thousands of repetitions. The ability to instantly and instinctively know what to turn on when will have been learned over years of trial and error. Do our clients have that? The answer is no, and training them in a way that ignores this is not only foolhardy it is also dangerous.

Regardless of the implement you use to train your clients if you cannot break down the movement, and the skill necessary to perform the movement safely – such as abdominal bracing, correct breathing, rooting – you should probably go and learn how to do those things before you hurt yourself and give those of us who genuinely are kettlebell instructors a bad name. With our world leading courses now accredited by Fitness Australia and Kinect Australia, and actually being cheaper than many of the made up, learned from a book alternatives, why on earth would you go anywhere else for your education? (I’ll also add that if you’re one of the many trainers who are using kettlebells with your clients without having attended any kind of certification not only do I hope you give them a discount on paying for a service you have no real idea how to provide, but also that for the sake of your career that nothing bad ever happens. Because if anyone injures themselves and the insurance guys come looking and you’re uncertified…? Let’s just say you’ll never work in the fitness industry again).

Get onboard with the world leaders, learn how to do things right and get in now. Because looking at the US – this RKC thing is HUGE. And with a course planned here for next year, if you’re not at the front of the pack now, you’re already behind in terms of client retention. Because they WILL go to RKCs instead of you – I know because about half my clients came from other PT studios and gyms where the instructors simply didn’t know what they were doing and the clients wanted to do more kettlebell training. Start now – follow the link below:

Dragon Door’s HKC (HardStyle Kettlebell Certified) Instructor Workshops- U.S. and Worlwide
Click here for Certification Course Information – Register now!

Get a Clue or Get a Coach

Just hang on a second while I get up here on my high horse…

This is either going to be very short and sweet or I’m about to sit here all day writing this as I start foaming at the mouth and ranting like a TV evangelist. So take a seat because you may want to get comfortable before I really get stuck into this.

Exercise, for someone who knows what they’re doing, isn’t difficult to program. Most coaches who know their stuff make it all look so easy – like Dan John, Robert Kabbas, Ian King, Charles Poliquin or Pavel Tsatsouline. They take complex ideas and turn them into easy to understand phrases and create these simple looking plans that do a whole bunch of things without having the need to explain it. For instance, s simple “big chest” from Robert while squatting forces me into thoracic extension, keeping my back taught and protected against injury while at the same time forcing my head up which starts to activate the extension reflex needed to get out of the hole.Imagine he had to say all that though? I’d crumple under the bar while trying to adjust all these things and each set would take forever as Robert would have to say about a thousand words per set. Instead I get “big chest” and all is right. Genius.

The mistake people make is that they see a great coach like Robert et al working with a great athlete like Simplice Ribouem they think it all looks so easy. It’s easy for them because training like that is their daily job. Robert has been around weightlifting for eons and has been an Olympic silver medallist and triple commonwealth games gold medallist and been head of the Australian Weightlifting Federation. He is as natural around lifting and elite performance as most people are at making toast – it’s an every day thing to him. In the video below you’ll see how relaxed both of them are, yet look at the weights Simplice uses – staggering!

So what most see is the humour, the relaxed effort and the ease with which they go at their work never once understanding the hidden depths of understanding, technical detail and years of toil to get there in the first place. Like a duck swimming all the effort comes from depths not often glimpsed by many.

Putting this into beginner context, most novice lifters cannot even get themselves into the start position to Deadlift properly. They are unable to maintain a neutral spine, they lack adequate tension in their body and most won’t drive through their feet properly and will turn the exercise into a hybrid Squat/ Good Morning and wonder why they are sore. So, to get better the novice needs to train more, or do they?

What difference does it make if you do a thousand reps if you are not trying to make each rep better than the last? I’ve written about this before, particularly in the Mindful Practice article, but strength training is not the mindless act of moving something in space many treat it as. Like any physical activity it should have a point. If you play tennis, even for fun, the objective is the same – get the ball in the white lines and win the game. To do so means you have to do some things well and we admonish ourselves when we don’t and the ball lands outside the lines (or in my case, over the fence). Yet when it comes to the middle of our pyramid, the strengthening block, we seem to switch off. (Refer to the Building Blocks article for visual reference.) How is it that when we play a sport we seek to increase skill, but then ignore the same desire to improve when working on the foundational elements that build the next, higher block of the functional pyramid? Becasue a thousand reps done poorly and mindlessly is, at the heart of it, still a thousand crappy reps that lead to nothing other than injury (or more likely the Crossfit Games).

The problem lies in people not being at all Zen about what they are doing. Being present in what you do, in every minute aspect of it is the real skill of exercise. The exact positioning of the load in your hands, of your feet pushing into the deck, the haze of chalk dust, knowing the exact position of your spine at every point during your lift, the trajectory of the bar or bell…There’s a lot to think about which is why real lifters don’t talk on their phones during a set. It’s also why in gyms such as Phoenix everyone goes quite when someone goes heavy – the person needs concentration to keep it all together. These are people who spend hours working on the skill of moving load and even they need total concentration on the task at hand. So how are you training in a gym filled with Britney and other soul destroying, testosterone sapping music with TVs shining from every corner and the “whoo’s” of the lycra morons in the Spinning room and expecting to improve?

The next problem lies in your own education. Like it or not, as much as exercise seems uncomplicated, it is quite difficult. When I first started in the industry it wasn’t. The main reason for that was because everyone moved better. These days most people need more rehab than they need training. And understanding what to do when to whom is difficult and requires skill and education. I can’t count how many times I see programs from people that are just all over the place, like throwing grenades into a room blindfolded hoping to hit something, anything. Instead, a good trainer comes along and enters the hazy, smoke filled confusion of the matter and like a ninja SEAL with laser night vision pinpoints the problem and drops a smart bomb on it. Like one of my clients at the moment. She’s been training with us a little while and has just started doing a single thirty minute PT session each week to go with the three group classes she does. Our group classes at Dragon Door Australia are great, mixing the FMS system with kettlebells, but in a group situation you simply can’t address every single issue, and so she does this small amount of PT. In just two hours of PT time we’ve massively improved her core strength to the point where it is a visible difference when she moves as well as having fixed her Squat to be good enough to pass the HKC! The kicker is that she’d had another PT for three years before she came to us. Even though she recognised she wasn’t an expert she hired out the problem, but to no avail. And yet, in the right hands, with a short amount of time expenditure (far shorter than three years!) she’s got a positive result!

Which is the whole point of all of this – if you don’t have the time or background to figure all this stuff out for yourself, and I am yet to meet more than a handful of people who do, then hire it out. I am lucky enough to have some of the absolute best minds in the world in my email system and can ask questions to them at any time. having that kind of back up and coaching has allowed me to make huge leaps in my abilities and understanding even at almost forty years old. So unless you want to spend the entire rest of your life learning how to get in peak shape just save yourself the time and frustration and hire an expert to help you.

 

What you can learn from Chuck Liddell

I was recently asked to help out at a private Chuck Liddell seminar held in Melbourne. It was different to the normal kind of events that top names put on – very small group, lots of time taken to ask and answer questions and genuine personal involvement from Chuck. Standing there watching Chuck do his thing after I had prepped everyone made me see some things very clearly.

For starters, most probably don’t know this but Chuck was a former NCAA Div. 1 wrestler. For people not familiar with the world of wrestling that is a pretty big deal. And believe it or not, being so good at wrestling has a massive payoff to his stand up striking. See, most people are very tense when they fight. This slows them down both physically and mentally. While tension can be a basis for strength, it also prevents the development of speed. In other words, tight fighters are slow, weak fighters.

What allows Chuck to be so relaxed in his striking is that he is a superb grappler. Because he doesn’t fear grappling at all he is able to work to his maximum on his striking. Now, I’m not going to try to work on technically correcting the Iceman as he has had a great result, but there have been a few times when his style of striking has been exploited. But he has remained true to the style that has won him so many fights all the time – after all, why try to fix a winning formula? Of course you improve, you refine and broaden your approach, but every successful athlete has a solid “go to” place for their game and staying close to it allows you to stay successful.

What Chuck taught at his seminar probably caught everyone off guard. I know was caught off guard as with limited space I focused on a warm up based around the needs for stand up fighting, not for grappling. But guess what he taught? Yup, grappling.

In fact, Chuck showed quite clearly how he based his game not on striking or on avoiding the grappling aspect of MMA, but on how to use grappling skills to keep the fight standing to draw your opponent out of their comfort zone. And that’s an interesting thing – he used a strength of his to defuse his opponents strength going so far as to say “Just because someone starts grappling with you doesn’t mean you have to grapple back”. And he then showed drills to keep the fight standing and continue on your terms, not the opponents.

And all that got me thinking – how many people are trying to train on a program devised for someone else? And how much better could their results be if they found their own way?

The second one in particular made me realise what a can of worms this could be – the reality is that the vast majority of people would be better off hiring out the coaching aspect of their training. Most people lack the knowledge, skill and objectivity to train themselves effectively. But for those who are skilled and self-aware and honest enough to create their own programs there is a lot to be learned.

Everyone has exercises that just “click” for them and those that don’t. For me, in the “bad” column is front squats. Sorry Mike Boyle but they just hurt my knees. No matter what, whenever I start getting serious about Front Squats my knees ache. No amount of rolling, stretching or anything else fixes it other than not doing it anymore. Conversely, I can work myself into the floor with Back Squats done in flat shoes with no issues (yet, the same can’t be said for squatting in Olympic Lifting shoes as they create back of knee issues). Likewise I can Overhead Press till the cows come home – either single or double kettlebell for low reps or high volume, even high volume, high load is no trouble. But Dips…I don’t do Dips. Ever since one of my ribs got dislocated a few years ago Dips feel like someone is trying to crack my sternum apart. And standing Barbell Bicep Curls? Forget it. They make my elbows feel like they’re about to explode. But Incline Dumbbell Curls are a thing of beauty and joy if I am actually in a “gun show” kind of mood.

So imagine I designed a program for myself, to attack my weaknesses. You’d think it should include Dips and Front Squats – after all plenty of top coaches recommend these movements as ideal for strength and muscle gains. But they don’t have my body. They’re not working with guys who are almost forty and have a string of terrible injuries that usually see people quit training altogether. And I know from painful experience that if I actually did put together a program that revolved around Front Squats and Dips I’d stick to it for about two weeks at most. And how effective is that going to be for me in the long run?

Because training is all about one thing – adaptation. And despite what Peter the PT from Globo Gym tells you, changing workouts to stop yourself adapting to them is the exact wrong thing to do. Because that adaptation to a given demand is the way we keep getting stronger and fitter. You don’t see runners start to get faster and quit running and switch to cycling, do you? Nor do you see a pianist quit practicing and change to another instrument. That adaptation, the increase of skill within the movement, is exactly what we are all after. Because an increase in skill within the lift can equal more load lifted, more muscle activated and that is exactly the point of this whole exercise thing.

I often get asked how come I only need to train three to four times per week to stay lean and strong. The answer is because I am often lifting as much as four times what my clients are – literally doing a workout that is four times more effective than them doing the exact same workout. For example, one of the most famous kettlebell programs known is the Program Minimum from Enter the Kettlebell. It is like a quick start program for someone who has limited training background and is unfamiliar with kettlebells. It suggests building up to five minutes of Get Ups two days a week and two other days building up to twelve minutes of Swings and some kind of recovery work. I’m sorry, but that is not a lot of exercise. My version of the Program Minimum builds up to an hour of alternating Double Swings with 32kg kettlebells and Get Ups with at least a 32kg bell. In the recent past I have done up to twenty minutes at a time of Get Ups with a 44kg bell and One Hand Swings with the 44kg on alternate days. See how it’s roughly the same program but I will get a massively different result from it than someone doing the original version with a 16kg bell?

Not only that but I had gone back to my version of the PM as a way to help me fix some of my movements and repattern these essential kettlebell lifts. In the RKC we talk about how we seek to become experts at our core lifts, to explore the elements of deep skill within them. Not only that but we also describe strength as a skill. If that is the case then the more skill I have in a given lift, I will demonstrate that by being able to perform it with a bigger load. So while we chase this increasing skill in our six core lifts we essentially have a lifetime of possible progress – much like Milo and his bull – we can simply add more weight to our lifts and continue progressing.

But at some point there will come a plateau and that is where the skill of being able to stick to your individual fight plan will come in. Some will be best served by removing difficulty and going back to simpler exercises they can push more load on (such as all my patterning work with the Swing and Get Up recently). Others will benefit from changing from one movement variation to another such as from straight Presses to Bottoms Up Presses. And even within those variations will have favorites that work well and others that don’t work so well. Along with that, knowing which drill to use when is a major factor – Waiter’s Presses help to develop shoulder pack while Bottoms Up Presses develop crush grip and force a vertical forearm. Both are important but knowing when to do which one is vital – all the while sticking to a Press because that is the lift we are always seeking to increase.

Learn from Chuck – find what works best for you. This doesn’t mean stick only to your favorite exercises. This means find the exercises that benefit you the most and don’t hurt you in any way. You will likely find that having a coach on hand to help you will be enormously beneficial. Someone who has traveled the path before you, perhaps many times, knows what is needed and can see how you react to training is possibly the most valuable asset you can have in training.

 

Building Blocks and Patterns

One of the biggest problems that still exists in today’s fitness training world is trying to convince people of the necessity to think of the body as more than just an assembled collection of parts. Thanks to the bodybuilding craze of the late ’70s and early ’80s and guys like Arnold, Ferrigno and even the later hulks such as Haney, Priest and Yates, gym culture is still caught up in the concept that if you train the body in isolation the whole will get stronger.

In my experience there are definitely times to use isolation exercises – heresy, I know from an RKC, but it’s the truth. For instance, many women in our community will struggle with pull ups. One of the biggest problems is a lack of strength in elbow flexion. For those who don’t know this is the movement caused by doing bicep curls. Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to devote whole days to “Arms” but in certain cases adding in some exercises in training to improve strength in that area will be beneficial. Likewise for guys struggling to finish off their press. For many, at the point the bell clears the head there is a distinct feeling of needing to change gears. What is happening is that emphasis goes from the bicep and shoulder to the triceps. Under max loads the body may not always happily make that leap to the next gear. But adding in some overhead tricep extensions will help. In fact, training logs of top GS competitors will show that during the off season they spend a large amount of time on assistance exercises while boosting General Strength and Conditioning. Their focus during this time is to boost overall strength and iron out any kinks in their movement – and tricep extensions fit this mold.

In Kenneth Jay’s book Perfecting the Press there are a myriad of ways to increase your press solely via pressing. While very clever they are also, in many cases, needlessly complex and time consuming to set up. And didn’t we all start using kettlebells in the first place because they were simple? So why are we trying to make things more complex than they need to be? In a lot of cases a simple solution will work best and if you look at top strength training groups such as Westside Barbell they have a host of assistance exercises to boost shortfalls in the three main lifts. The development of GPP – of being all round strong – is chief among them though and will take you a lot further in your training than seeking out a fancy way of doing things.

This return to simple, to smart programming is why the FMS system makes so much sense to me. The tests themselves are for the most part building blocks of exercise. For instance there are tests to determine internal and external rotation of the shoulder while also testing thoracic rotation and extension. These skills are important for throwers, fighters, swimmers, kayakers and anyone who has to ever rotate and move their arms. Likewise the Active Straight Leg Raise test while looking like a simple hamstring flexibility test is also a test for how active the hip flexors are and also has important links to squat depth. The idea is that, like with a pyramid, a bigger, stronger base of movement skill can lead to a high eventual peak of sport skill.

Movement before Strength before Specific Skill.

These building blocks are so foundational that improving them can lead to instant gains in movements that look completely unrelated. There is an excellent new book out called Becoming Bulletproof by Tim Anderson and Mike McNiff. They’ve spent a lot of time looking at the foundational, so called primitive patterns, within the FMS and integrated them into training sessions. In particular their use of rolling and crawling has reminded me of several things –

We have lost our way as beings. Like it or not we are all still not far out of the trees and our monkey cousins don’t seem to experience all the movement and injury issues we seem to. (Of course, not being able to speak with monkeys, even hand signals with that Coco, I am just guessing at this). I’ve never seen a Chimp complaining to another Chimp that it has plantar fasciitis due to not warming up running away from a Jaguar. As humans we start to learn the skill of movement early in life as we begin exploring. We start with crawling and eventually stand. Sadly, as soon as we start getting the hang of this we are then sent off to school to start “learning”. Sadly the book learning is spent sitting down and we then spend the rest of our lives forgetting everything we learned in the first six!

The drills within Becoming Bulletproof focus on things that we all should spend time doing and the more I look the more I see them everywhere – crawling and rolling can be found in the Get Up and swimming, both of which I have heavily advocated. The Get Up is a no brainer. When great minds like Steve Maxwell (who originally brought it into the RKC system), Pavel Tsatsouline, Gray Cook, Brett Jones, Dave Whitley, Jeff O’Connor, et al all heavily praise the Get Up you’d have to figure that it’s probably a good idea to incorporate it into your own training. But swimming…Wait…that’s not very RKC of me – to advocate both something that is thought of as “cardio” AND non-load bearing.

But think about it – the freestyle stroke IS crawling in water. It IS the climbing pattern that Gray so heavily advocates. It IS the Monkey Bars that Dan John enthuses about. It is all of those things. It is easy on the joints and good for flexibility. It is good for the heart and lungs. And, of course, it is an essential athletic movement that may just save your life some day.

But what about other movements within the RKC system? Where are our breakdowns, or patterning progressions? Well, if you’re a good reader by now you’ve taken me up on my urging to buy Dynami. I’ve written fairly extensively about it over the last month or so and honestly believe that everyone should own a copy. If you’re still sitting on the fence about it consider that within are workouts that show you the building blocks of movements – exercises such as Wall Touches, Single Leg Deadlifts, etc. – are all in there and all in a format that you can use instantly.

Because that’s the funny thing – we’ll all go and spend time doing our FMS correctives to fix building blocks of movement, but we won’t pattern to build the blocks of exercise skill. The exercises themselves, while able to be improved via the addition of foundational movement skills, are also able to improved via the use of breakdown drills that will highlight and improve various aspects of each exercise. My work on simple progressions for the Swing has seen me quickly improve my Snatch numbers with the 32kg – up to 140 reps in two weeks! And I’ve even been Snatching the 36kg for a few reps too. Only a few months ago that all seemed out of reach. I thought those bells were for guys like Dave Whitley – big, massively strong guys. Well, spending some time lining it all up right has shown me that yet again I should raise my expectations of my own training. I don’t actually believe there is an upper limit for how much strength is possible. The gains I have made in the last few moths have been miles beyond anything I had thought I was capable of – from essentially fixing my hamstring issues, to improving my shoulder mobility and thoracic rotation, to increasing performance elements like my hip drive to allow me to snatch bigger weights.

All made possible by simplifying my training, working on the building blocks to recreate my functional pyramid bigger and better than ever.

Simplify and Listen

Some amazing things happen when you remove noise from your life. Experiments in reductionist living have always been successful for me. I was always curious when I used to read Calvin and Hobbes and Calvin’s dad would quote Thoreau, “simplify” (hey, if it gets you interested in classic authors it doesn’t matter the source, right?)

So I’ve always strived for minimilism. That’s why I love my Merrells and Vibrams. That’s why the kettlebell speaks to me so clearly. That’s why the RKC set of exercises is all I believe I need to have my body at or near it’s peak constantly.

But the funny thing is that once you start to simplify, to reduce what is there, to cut away the excess like Bruce Lee did with Jeet Kune Do, you really start to realize how little you actually need. I firmly believe that there should be an RKC only HKC. That once you have learnt and mastered the RKC Basic 6 that there should be a master class on the deepest elements of the core, foundational moves.

Over the last year and a half I have been lucky enough to host four HKCs, with the fifth only three weeks away. Because of the concentration on the three foundational exercises, because of the multitude of introduction, beginner and HKC Preparation workshops I’ve run I’ve really spent a lot of time thinking about these moves, how to teach them better and how to do them better. I actually don’t thik many of my clients really need to be doing anything other than the HKC Big Three and if they really learned to nail them just right would achieve better results from that than they would from all the other exercises lumped together.

And funnily enough the focus on my Swing has given big pay offs in terms of my Clean and Snatch as well as other (somewhat) related lifts like the Deadlift.

Simplifying is never easy. I have long been scolded by friends for having a “simple” life. What seems to escape them is how difficult it really is to have only three things that you give attention to – work, family/ relationships, training. There used to be a fourth which was whichever sport I was doing in en effort to unsuccessfully prove myself unbreakable. But now, it’s just the three. Three skills at HKC, three important elements to life – coincidence?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying if you are into more than three things there’s anything wrong with that. Just that for me, the more I minimize, the more I remove, the better the result.

Which led me back to use of the Program Minimum from Enter the Kettlebell. For some reason my still all-time favorite workout is an hour of alternating Swings (done however you please) and Get Ups. I prefer to go heavy. I like Double Swings for sets of ten and Heavy Get Up singles on each side. I just go as I feel for an hour. A few weeks of this usually makes my body feel fantastic and like I can do just about anything.

But the funny thing about only doing two exercises is that it gives you a lot of focus on how you are doing them, not on actually doing them. What I mean is that you become far more focused on what your body is doing rather than on your rep count. And that leads to all kinds of awesome discoveries about yourself.

For instance, part of my current work which stems largely from Dynami is the to add in Wall Touches. This simple drill is step two in how to teach the Swing after teaching people how to find their hip creases. It forces the student to learn to reach back with their hips and load onto their heels while maintaining balance. What it is ALSO supposed to teach is that you come forward by firing your hips.

However, what I found is that I actually use my quads a fair bit to help create my forward movement. So get this – I usually do Double Swings with 2x32kg bells. At this point in training I am standing about a foot away from a wall and reaching back to touch it with my butt without load. That’s about as simple as you can get. All I’m focused on is the stretching out of my hips, neutral spine, balance on feet and then drive hips forward and finish in a vertical plank. Simple, right?

But that’s not what I was doing. I was cheating. That cheating wasn’t evident with a bell in my hands. Even when I video myself I can’t see that I am not using my hips fully but relying on my quads. But 3 x 20 unloaded Wall Touches showed it to me. The removal of all else showed it quite plainly actually after I’d done this particular drill a few times.

So part of my discovery has been simply solved by doing more reps in a mindful manner. Like I spoke in about in previous articles – when you only have a certain amount of attention to spend on an activity until you master the actions of that movement you will be spending a lot of your attention on simple mechanics. Only when your body is able to do that action on auto pilot will you be able to actually start to notice things – how you grip the bells, what happens when you change your stance slightly, eye position. Or in my case how much I use my hips.

The remainder of my discovery was not from the volume I had done, but from the simplicity of the drill. Having drills in your training that lead to these “a-ha” moments are a cornerstone of the RKC system. Usually these drills are so powerful that a few reps will teach the body, instantly, to do something differently.

In my recent training I have made quite a few discoveries about the Program Minimum, my body, and some eye opening, for me, revelations about kettlebell ballistics. That bit alone deserves it’s own post so I will attend to that later.  The removal of everything other than some FMS drills, stretching (wow, has that taught me a LOT), patterning and then Swings and Partial Get Ups has shown me the simple effectiveness of these exercises. In fact, six weeks of only PM and the FMS/ patterning drills has seen me PR in the Snatch and start to regular use the 32kg for Snatching. The added hip drive, body awareness and mechanics would have been slower to develop had I had to concentrate on more things at once by actually Snatching to gain the same increase. Not only that but it has allowed me to work heavier than my Snatch weight which has built my grip strength meaning that I don’t feel like I’m going to drop the bell on every rep.

When you remove distractions, when you simplify your training, you actually get to hear what your body is saying. Subtracting the non-essential away from life is difficult. In a world filled with iPods, internet chat, email, mobile phones – the whole world is demanding your attention right NOW. With so much noise, so much clutter and distraction it is no wonder that most of us don’t move well or often – we simply can’t hear our bodies telling us what to do!

Trust me on this – remove distraction. People will “what if” you to death. But those same people will be stuck in the same rut in six months while you will be setting new peaks in performance. For some reason people get very uncomfortable when you deliberately remove “stuff”. (And don’t even get me started on the social pressure involved in the Warrior Diet). Resist the peer pressure to go back to kitchen sink training. Stick to the basics and learn to develop high levels of skills that have big payoffs in other areas.

Drills vs Exercise

In the last few posts we’ve looked at some of the things I’m doing to improve my movement, regain some function and still continue increasing my strength.

The downside to all this is some people will see the trees not the forest.

Tees = the “stuff”. You know, the pressing variations, the use of kneeling, half kneeling and other patterning work.

Forest = the purpose of doing the “stuff”. i.e. increase strength and gain from training. To steal a line from a certain other group – to chase a daily PR> While i don’t actually believe that is possible, the mindset has to be that each day in the gym has a purpose attached to it and that purpose is to improve physically. The improvement that comes is dependant on what your eventual goal is and how you’ve laid out your plan. If you don’t have a training plan, stop reading now and go make one. Training without a plan is like the blind leading the blind. In the dark. Blindfolded. Without talking. Underwater.

So what usually happens is that people start to take these assistance exercises and create challenges for themselves with these exercises. I have no issue with working to improve, but the measurement by which you judge training is not whether you improved in an assistance exercise, but whether you improved the main lift (what we are calling the “forest” in this case). Because no one really cares what your Tall Kneeling best press is. Or your best three board Bench  Press. Or your best Power Clean off blocks.

Those exercises are only good and appropriate exercises if they do the one thing you selected them for – improve your main exercise.

The thing I see the most that makes no sense is wrestlers having an unhealthy obsession with their Bench Press. While I agree that having a strong upper body to push opponents away is crucial and that it is a useful judge of upper body strength – it is not the sole determinant in being a successful wrestler. And like with all the baseline physical abilities that are banded about – such as a double bodyweight Squat and Deadlift – at some point that gains slow down and there is no further increase in sport ability from increasing those lifts. When someone first enters the gym and they are relatively weak. Increasing the Big Three will see instant improvements in their sport abilities simply from gaining strength. But as strength increases, the amount of time spent chasing it also needs to. And in general, once you reach double bodyweight in the Squat and Deadlift (and I would think one and a half times bodyweight in the Bench) chasing after more strength and bigger numbers in those lifts will only see you take time away from actually practicing your sport. The thing you’re actually trying to increase your skill at.

I spoke about this in the last article in relation to Bottoms Up Presses. I found as i closed in on my half bodyweight press for Level 2 that taking my BUP from 32kg to 36kg did nothing. I also found that using a 44kg bell for Get Ups did nothing to improve my Press (although that is more because the Get Up is a very good lift for me and I have always been strong at them. As an aside it could also explain why my Rotary Stability score is always so good – the initial move off the ground IS the RS test). What worked for me was highish reps with the 32kg for Presses and another day of low rep work with the 40kg as first written about by Kenneth Jay in his Beast Tamer article (found in the RKC manual).

Because, for us, the BUP is nothing more than a sideshow act. The Get Up is only tested up to 24kg. But the Press is tested at half bodyweight. See? Don’t let the trees get in the way of the forest. And don’t let the Drills take away your focus from the Exercise.

My focus for now is one thing – regain my mobility and do it as fast as possible. That means avoiding things that will either slow me down or see my likely use poor patterns to accomplish them. The CK FMS system comes complete with a list of suggestions for exercises if you screen particular ways – for instance if you screen poorly for Shoulder Mobility it is suggested that you do not do overhead work – avoiding Pressing, Snatches, Windmills etc. So that is what I am doing. I do a few (very few) reps of some Pressing patterns to maintain it. But I am not in the middle of Rites of Passage which sees peak weeks of 150 reps per arm being reached. In contrast I do 30 total for the week and my Get Up work is never truly vertical as I am only performing Partial Get Ups.

Once I have regained my mobility there are some things I have my eyes on doing, but first things first.

Don’t get carried away with trying to become the World Tall Kneeling Press champion. Or the Single Leg Deadlift champion. Use these exercises for what thy are designed for – to improve your abilities in key skills. Like with all programming if they aren’t helping you achieve your goal – which you will know from your training log – then get rid of them and start again. The constant process of check and test, check and test is the only way you will ever truly reach great heights in your training and programming.

And don’t forget to vote for me on Dragon Door TVs blog contest! Just go here to vote – http://www.dragondoor.com/media_center/dragon_door_tv/ scroll down the bottom of the page and then click on Andrew Read.