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The kettlebell is an ancient Russian weapon against weakness.
“A workout should give you more than it takes out of you.”
Russian kettlebells are traditionally measured in poods. One pood, an old Russian unit, equals 16 kilograms, approximately 35 pounds.
Do not put your spine into flexion during or after training.
Gray Cook, physical therapist extraordinaire, points out that motor control goes south with fatigue and “the body will always sacrifice quality for quantity.” When you are no longer able to continue with perfect technique, the gig is up.
Do not worry about getting a pump, a burn, or a sweat. Set aside 20 to 30 minutes and practice—as you would rehearse playing a musical instrument, fully absorbed in the task and committed to getting better rather than doing time and marking off a certain number of reps.
Start light, but rapidly progress to the kettlebells you would describe as “medium.” Weights that are too light do not offer enough feedback for quality learning.
Make the swings EXPLOSIVE. They should be hard to do. Maybe even test your explosiveness by going outside and throwing the bell, letting it go as it comes toward the top of the swing. If it doesn’t fly six feet or more, you’re not swinging explosively.
Make the get-ups 30–35 seconds each. I believe this is a key to success that many people miss! They rush the get-up and therefore get a lot less time under tension and less quality movement.
At StrongFirst, we do not stretch just for the heck of it. We stretch to remove the brakes that prevent us from fully expressing our strength.
Here is the difference: In a squat, the knees and the hips flex to a similar degree on the way down. In a hinge, the hips do most of the flexing.
In the swing, the arms work on the negative, the hips on the positive.
Next, work on your breathing. Forcefully exhale through your teeth on the way up; sharply inhale through your nose on the way down. In the future, you will learn how to take two sharp inhalations back to back on the way down.
“Disorderly settings” are what you need when you are after all-terrain strength.
An asymmetrical load seriously challenges the stabilizers and increases the recruitment of many muscles.
When you are very competent in the two-arm swing—and not a moment sooner—add the one-arm swing to your practice.
At the top of the rep, the kettlebell will surge forward, determined to twist your torso and to pull your shoulder out of its socket. Do not let it. Square your shoulders. Pull the working shoulder back into its socket—but do not shrug it up.
Do not let me catch you wearing those sissy gym gloves!
Give yourself even more rest than dictated by the talk test after the first couple of sets—the circuitry that tells your body it needs more oxygen is slow to react at first.
Once or twice a month, take on any physical challenge that will test your spirit without breaking your body.
While redlining your heart and flooding your body with lactic acid is not something one should do regularly, an occasional jolt of this sort is highly beneficial to a healthy person to bust through a plateau.
A LITTLE EVERY DAY GOES A LONG WAY
Another vital reason to keep the rep count low, per set and per training session, is to leave enough energy for other things—practicing sport skills, being ready to fulfill your duty on the battlefield or just enjoying your day and not dragging your tail through it.
Bulgarian elite gymnastics coach Ivan Ivanov believes that the purpose of a training session is to “store energy” in the body rather than exhaust it.
Contrary to the HIIT propaganda, running at a speed that allows talking—just below the lactic threshold—is the most crucial component of serious endurance athletes’ training.
To sum up, there is no rest period to qualify you as a stud or studette. Do not look at the clock at all. Doing so could only provoke wrong decisions. Listen to your body and your breath—not your watch or phone.
On the other hand, if you do not overload, you do not have to deload. That is the beauty of step loading. Select a comfortably hard training load (weight, sets, reps, rest periods) and stay with it until it feels almost easy—you own it. Only then move up.
Rest actively. Walk around, shake off the tension, do finger extensions with a rubber band. Breathe calmly and deeply, always inhaling through your nose and exhaling completely, even exaggeratedly. Do the next set of swings or get-ups when you have recovered enough to pass the talk test.
Once or twice a month take on any physical challenge that will test your spirit without breaking your body.
Giving 100% tends to trigger excessive muscle tension that acts like a brake. This is why top Russian specialists like Prof. Vladimir Volkov prescribe no more than a 95% effort when aiming to express maximal power.
Yang breathing is breathing during a strike or some other explosive action. “A sharp exhalation is performed with maximal tension and ideally, for greater concentration, with a scream,”
Over half a century ago, Soviet scientists discovered that cranking up the pressure inside the abdomen automatically—and dramatically—amplifies any muscular exertion.
The inhales must be so sharp that your nostrils stick together, like you had a nose job.
