ENTER THE KETTLEBELL!: Strength Secret of the Soviet Supermen

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Another exercise that I love is the getup. This is performed twice a week for 5 minutes non stop switching arms on each rep. It requires constant focus and every muscle in your body. 5 minutes might not seem like a longtime, but I can certainly feel it after pressing a 24kg (53 lb) bell five or six times per side. I dare you to find a single exercise, kettlebell or not, that delivers more benefits than the kettlebell swing! Senior RKC instructor Steve Maxwell, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Champion, had flat-out stated that doing the perfect kettlebell swing alone is superior to 99 percent of the sophisticated strength and conditioning programs out there.” Every person can be come two to three times stro nger and heavy kettlebells are one of the most powerful mea ns to make a man strong er. —Ivan Lebedev, Russian strongman Weightlifting, 1916 The author also likens the kettlebell to the AK-74, and calls one of its usage: "Fatloss without the dishonor of aerobics." Therefore it is obvious there's a specific crowd the author is targeting, the gym bros, the lifters who live for the numbers. These [stren gth athletes] are the people of the future. A tim e will come when everyone wil l be this strong. This is the essence of the country’s ha ppiness. —Anton Chekh ov

For Russian strongmen, elite military forces, and hardened criminals in Chechnya, the kettlebell has been an essential tool for developing a balanced musculature, endurance during the most grueling physical trials, functionally explosive strength, and a whole host of other benefits. Since I am a gym owner, I have been to a lot of different workshops: this one is by far the best. The quality of instruction and level of attention is second to none. This is the highest quality of instruction I have ever had, and I have been to some excellent workshops. There is tremendous depth and it is extremely practical for anyone in athletics or just looking to get in shape. This workshop accomplished everything and more that I was hoping for." The pros and cons of sports-specific training… the kettlebell “what-the-hell effect” for improving at things you have not practiced… professional powerlifting and marathon running success stories… how to truly excel at a certain exercise… when to do “special strength” training… customized for what?... beware the moonshine—the dangers of home-brewed coaching. Always front and center. I come from a country where, eerily, World War II never ended. Russians never forgot the sacrifices of their soldiers. Americans ought not to as well. When you feel ready, move up to the one-arm swing. Don’t grip the kettlebell’s handle, but rather hook it with your fingers. Try to keep your arm and shoulder as relaxed as possible—remember the rope analogy. Keep your other hand clear; don’t get cute by pushing off your knee! Big Brother is watching.Note that there is a world of difference between swinging a kettlebell and performing a proper hard-style swing. The devil is in the details. And this is where "Kettlebell: Simple & Sinister" comes in. I have written it in the tradition of "The Naked Warrior," with a laser focus and obsessive attention to detail. Understand the crucial value of "slow strength" training—the counterintuitive and rarely revealed secret of Russian athletic might

t should be obvious to anyone but a complete moron that swinging a castiron ball the wrong way could lead to worse than a bad headache. So I did what others naturally would, I also maxed my DL and OHP since I've swung and pressed so much. My DL went from 170 -> 190 and my OHP from 70-75. Is it the famous WTH effect? (No, there’s no such thing as a WTH-effect, if you exercise and train to become stronger, you do get stronger) I cant for sure tell the reason why, but I think the combination of swing and snatch for months did grease my hinge pattern. However, I do believe that the constant bracing you get from repeatedly pressing bells near your 1-5RM really trains your bracing in general and that’s what helped me the most. Lo único negativo es que, como todos sus libros, la verborrea comercial y el estilo de vendedor de coches usados puede ser un tanto desmotivador. Así mismo, los libros de este tipo tienen una maquetación y un diseño que hinchan bastante el número de páginas y el precio. Get this one foundational drill down—and most of the remaining exercises will be a piece of cake to learn and masterHeavy kettlebells are traditionally called “bulldogs.” “Heavy” is in the eye of the beholder; we usually dump the bells heavier than 32 kilograms in that category. 48 kilograms is as heavy as traditional kettlebells go, but it does not stop Russia’s strongest from going heavier. Weightlifting legend Yuri Vlasov was heartbroken when someone stole his custom-made 56-kilogram kettlebells.

TGUs and Presses lag behind. I am going to do TGUs in a few minutes with the 20kg, but they probably won’t be full get ups. Just practicing and building strength…eventually I’ll be up to the 32kg there too. My understanding is that compared to the Heavy day you do 2 rungs less on the Light day and 1 rung less on the Medium day. This makes sense to me, so it is always relatively less volume on the 'lighter' days. The most intense and complete instruction training course I have ever experienced. A level of detail of instruction I have not found anywhere else. Pavel's depth of knowledge on all aspects of training is amazing. Nothing else is even close." The culture is uninviting. Sure the folks that espouse it often seem aggressively masculine - to the point of comedy. But it’s not comedy. They are very serious and - as someone who sorta wanders through life finding humor in things - that was a club I didn’t want to join, nor did I particularly feel like I could hang with that crowd, even if I wanted to.Once you have succeeded in making these two straight lines, you are ready for the regular swing. But better finesse your timing first. You will soon notice that there is a time lag between the driving force of the hips and the kettlebell’s flight—like in a punch. The towel reveals this important subtlety of the swing. Keep swinging, and pay attention to the timing of your efforts. Try to make the kettlebell hover weightless for a moment at the apex. Drive your hips explosively, but don’t rush the kettlebell. Let it catch up as your hip drive goes up your body like a wave. Hurrying the kettlebell is like punching with the arm—ineffective. Work some more on your timing. Try to make the kettlebell go a certain height between your waist and your head without scooping your body or pulling with your arms. I bought Tsatsouline's book to gain mental strength and motivation to stay with it and maybe expand my body weight program with kettlebell exercises. You have got to be kidding me, Comrade. I said, fold at the hips. Not the spine, not the knees—the hips! The program consists of three parts. A 10 minute warmup at the beginning of each workout, and four days working out. Two days doing swings and two days doing getups. Since I had a significant amount of previous experience I jumped right in with a heavy 24 kg (53lb) kettlebell for 1 month. It is suggested that the average male start with a 16kg (35lb) kettlebell. Several years ago this is what I started with and have since moved to the 20kg (44lb) kettlebell then to my present 24kg (53lb) one.

Stay loose through your arms. Kettlebell cleans and snatches are not curls; the arms barely pass the force generated by the hips. Should your arms tense up, especially on the downswing, you are asking to tweak your elbows. You must have noticed that, unlike dumbbells, kettlebell weights do not go up in small increments. There is simply no need for extra iron. Inventive gireviks don’t need a ton of weight to provide progressive resistance. And you get to save money and space. “Pavel, the RKC course marked such an incredible time in my life. The pain and suffering was all worth it. I will never forget it. It is with me for life!!!” —(Doug Nepodal, RKC)

Rite of Passage is a press program from the “enter the kettleball” by Pavel. The goal of the program is to be able to press half your bodyweight and snatch a 24kg kettlebell for 200 reps in 10 minutes. You are supposed to start with your 5-8RM kettlebell, every 4th week you do a test day on the press/snatch. There are several versions of this program, the one in the book but also a workbook by Antonio delugio with a much more aggressive progression. I followed the workbook for my first 1,5 months then another but similar progression I got from a friend who’s an RKC where the light days are much lighter. The program contains a light, medium and heavy day for pressing. The program is structured around ladder sets in which you clean and press your ball for one, then two, then three and so on and then restart. The goal is to do 5x1,2,3,4,5 with your chosen kettleball. The presses are supersetted with pull ups and then followed by swings or snatches. The amount of swings/snatches you do is decided by a dice roll, I just rolled the dice and let it decide the minutes, fewer meant more ntensity, longer snatch or swings sessions gave you time to pace yourself. I varied between two hand and single hand swings depending on what I felt like. Pavel's Russian Kettlebell Certification was an intense learning period for exercise practice that you can't get anywhere else with people you probably couldn't find together in one group if you searched a lifetime. Excellent and thorough knowledge by all instructors, especially Pavel. Scope is probably the broadest I have ever dealt with. Practical use is excellent." To use myself as an example, I've followed Simple and Sinister since February 2016. Now, in January 2021, five years later I am finally starting to add the snatches and presses from the book you read into my workouts in a serious way (and actually I'm not following the ladder method for the presses described in the book, nor the clean and press move, I'm just doing strict military presses). Snatches and presses are not necessary if you are doing swings and getups (the S&S programme). Snatches are a harder move to learn and to execute than swings (the comparable move here) and have more benefits, yes, but their difficulty is one mark against them compared with swings. Presses are certainly at least in my opinion, not better than getups. The getup is a much more holistic and complicated movement with lots of benefits well over and beyond the more narrow benefits of presses, but pressing is very important to develop the snatch move (which I am finally working at developing as we speak!) and it strengthens up a lot more of your body than you might suspect at first glance!