Copyright 2012, Bud Jeffries
A Dragon Door Publications, Inc production
All rights under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions.
Published in the United States by:
Dragon Door Publications, Inc
P.O. Box 4381, St. Paul, MN 55104
Tel: (651) 487-2180 • Fax: (651) 487-3954
Credit card orders: 1-800-899-5111
Email: dragondoor@aol.com • Website: www.dragondoor.com
ISBN 10: 0-938045-37-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-938045-37-3
This edition first published in January, 2012
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher.
Printed in China
Book design, and cover by Derek Brigham, Site: www.dbrigham.com • (763) 208-3069 • Email: bigd@dbrigham.com
DISCLAIMER: The author and publisher of this material are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any injury that
may occur through following the instructions contained in this material. The activities, physical and otherwise, described
herein for informational purposes only, may be too strenuous or dangerous for some people and the reader(s) should consult a physician before engaging in them.
DEDICATION
To God without whom nothing is
To my wife Heather and my son Noah without who none of this
would have happened
To Pavel for bringing the kettlebell back
To John Du Cane for publishing this book
To Dennis Rogers for encouraging me to do this
To Logan Christopher, my partner in crime
To everybody who said it was possible along the way and
especially to those who said it was impossible and that I could never do it
And lastly to the seven “B’s” which give spice to life
I WILL BE IRON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword .....................................................................VII
I will be Iron! .................................................................1
I Will Be Iron ....................................................................................................1
Why the Swing? ..............................................................................................7
The pictures in this book and what’s wrong with “fitness” today .................9
My Story and why this will work for “anybody!” .........................................11
A word and some tips on food .....................................................................17
How to perform the swing ..........................................19
Swing Training .............................................................29
What the Swing did for me / Maximizing the Swing ....................................31
The New World in Long or Third Way Cardio ................................................41
Style and Technique of Kettlebell Lifting .......................................................45
Cheating For and Against the Grip ................................................................51
Interval and Non-interval Time and Reps ......................................................55
Reverse Assistance Exercises for the Swing ...................................................62
How to do this training ...............................................69
How to do this Training .................................................................................69
Pre-cycle: Base-Building ................................................................................71
Interval Build-Up ...........................................................................................73
Swing Cycles ..................................................................................................75
Cycle 1 – Straight build-up cycle – 500-1000 Reps! ................................77
Cycle 2 – A straight weight cycle .............................................................78
Cycle 3 – The staggered cycle ..................................................................79
Cycle 4 – Pre-exhaustion cycle .................................................................81
Cycle 5 – Swings, other and then swing ..................................................82
Cycle 6 – Three exercise cycle ..................................................................82
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Cycle 7 – The swing as pre-exhaustion to another exercise ....................83
Cycle 8 – Heavy-swing-heavy ..................................................................83
Cycle 9 – Specific muscle pre-exhaustion ................................................84
Cycle 10 – Easier exercise to keep moving ..............................................84
Cycle 11 – Harder than you want it to be ................................................85
Cycle 12 – Heavy and light the next day .................................................85
Cycle 13 – Using the swing to continue another kettlebell exercise .......86
How to put this all together .......................................87
Weekly Training Examples: ............................................................................89
Example 1 .................................................................................................89
Example 2 .................................................................................................91
Example 3 .................................................................................................93
Example 4 .................................................................................................95
Example 5 .................................................................................................98
Example 6 ...............................................................................................100
Example 7 ...............................................................................................104
Example 8 ...............................................................................................106
Example 9 ...............................................................................................107
Mixed Kettlebell Training for
Super-Intense Cardio .................................................108
Example 1 - Battling Ropes .........................................................................111
Example 2 - Stone Training and Kettelbell ..................................................113
Example 3 - Light Barbell Conditioning and Kettlebell Mix ........................115
Example 4 - Tire Flipping .............................................................................117
Example 5 - Bodyweight Sprawl .................................................................119
Example 6 - Heavy Bag Work ......................................................................121
Example 7 - The Dumbbell ..........................................................................123
Example 8 - Sled Pulling .............................................................................125
Example 9 - Sledgehammer ........................................................................127
Example 10 - Mobility and Physical Harmony Movements ........................129
I WILL BE IRON
More perspectives on the swing ...............................133
Building Swing Volume ...............................................................................135
Swings .........................................................................................................139
Another Man’s Journey up the Swing Mountain ........................................141
A Club Full of Swingers ...............................................................................147
My Short Journey in the Swing ...................................................................149
Never Ending Progress ..............................................153
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FOREWORD
“Mixed training
produces mixed
results.”
T
he famous physiologist refers to one’s inability to go beyond mediocrity if strength
and endurance are pursued with equal zeal. I never questioned this axiom as I had
met many who had tried to prove it wrong. They all ended up average and hurt.
Then I met Bud Jeffries.
Bud defies the laws of physiology. His body could have been custom made for strength, forged
from the same mold as Louis Cyr and Paul Anderson. Jeffries’ 1,000-pound squat starting from
the bottom of a power rack is a strength feat legends are made of.
Respect but no surprises so far.
Then I watch this mountain of muscle drop into an effortless full side split, relaxed as a little
gymnast girl. I have been fortunate to meet very strong men and very flexible ones—but they were
never the same. Until Bud.
But it is Jeffries’ endurance that is on par with bumblebee’s flight—”it is against the natural
laws!” He has swung a 53-pound kettlebell for almost an hour non-stop. He has done 1,000
sprawls. He pounded—not tapped—the heavy bag for one full hour. In other words, he performed
feats of conditioning which would stop any 150-pound MMA stud in his tracks.
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How does a man built like T-rex beat velociraptors in their own game?—I have no idea. But I
listen and I learn. Bud Jeffries reminds me of another great strongman, Paul Anderson. The latter’s
training had anticipated scientific developments decades ahead of his time. He was extremely
smart and he refused to allow scientists’ limitations become his own.
Ladies and gentleman, I am proud to present Bud Jeffries, the man who never compromises
between strength and conditioning.
—Pavel Tsatsouline, the author of Enter the Kettlebell! and Power to the People!
I WIll
Be
Iron
I WIll Be
Iron
H
enry David Thoreau said: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner so as not to wake
up and discover upon my death that I had not lived.”
We all know in relation to the above quote that life is hard. If you truly would live this quote, as
all men should strive to do, then you must be harder. You must be iron. Sucking the marrow out
of a bone actually refers to breaking the largest bone of a large animal and then cooking it down
to get the part believed to be a delicacy. The strength to get the “delicacy” of life can be yours.
To be able to take advantage of every part of life, to have the power, the endurance, the vitality
to never miss an opportunity, to not be sick, to not be fatigued, to have absolute control over your
body, mind, and spirit in a way that would give you the power to truly take advantage; to suck the
marrow out of life.
If you would do this, you must remake yourself into iron. This is something that I think has
lacked when people have discussed the quote for nearly a century. The fact that, if you would get
everything there is out of life, if you would be everything that you could be, then you must be
remade into the image of iron into living steel, into a being who has absolute vitality, a being who
cannot be dissuaded by the toughness of life or the toughness of any immediate physical situation
or task.
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I WILL BE IRON
I believe the journey that I have
been on has led me toward being
remade in iron. I believe that one
of, if not the optimal tool for
remaking yourself, and my tool of
choice, is the kettlebell. To follow
will be how I remade myself with
the use of the kettlebell swing –
the first of all kettlebell exercises,
as well as other various exercises;
how I trained; and why it’s put
together in that way.
Here, my friends, is a pivotal
question. Do you want a real,
rich, full life? Do you want to get
everything life can give? Whether
you’re a soldier or Superman,
couch potato, weekend warrior,
business tycoon or primal animal
– I believe no one can have and
live their best life, most powerful
life, without transforming themselves. Without really getting ultimate vitality, beyond simple fitness. A fitness that transforms
your mind and body.
More than that, this book is
intended to give a simple program
that anyone can use. A program
that can fit your life. A realistic
program to give you superhuman
results. Most training given in the physical world is junk. This is
not. This is to take the highest level and most effective training
of world class athletes and warriors and make it available to
everyone. The truth is most people in the real world won’t see
results and life-change without this kind of truly effective training. If you’re going to take the
effort to make yourself into iron, then use a tool and a style that will actually do the job in real
life. One that is simple, time efficient and progressive. It works for men, women, starters and seasoned pros to muscle up, cut huge amounts of fat and to become more than human –
Superhuman.
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I WILL BE IRON
To bring you to where I have
gone and believe you could go, I
have written this tome. To try and
open a new door into the area and
power of superhuman strength,
superhuman vitality, superhuman
endurance and thereby a new level
of mental and spiritual power – a
new level of whole being connection. A new level of life for most
humans to go to. This is the opening of that door for me. I hope it
will be the opening of that door for
you.
Some may disagree and say that
I place too much emphasis on the
power of an exercise as transformational in life, but I believe they
are wrong. I believe that when a
man or woman launches his
whole self into the performance of
a simple thing and that simple
thing takes him or her to a height
of control of the body, of expression of power, of emotion, of mental strength, and faithfulness to
just that small simple thing, it has
a transformative power across, not
just his or hers physical medium,
but the whole life.
To train with the savage intensity and duration that I believe this training requires in remaking
yourself in iron, you literally touch every area of the body. You
touch the strength, your heart, your lungs, your internal organs
and you also touch the mind, the spirit, and the unification of all
the forces of the body into a single cohesive one directional power.
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This has deep effects past simply physical strength, and that is a powerful thing.
I also at this time chose to change my body. I chose to use this tool to remake my body, to
remake myself deliberately, both mind and body. I was already an accomplished athlete, already
one of the strongest men in the world, already versed in many styles of strength and exercise.
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I found there was more.
There was more to be had
in myself. In changing to
an extremely deliberate, as
Thoreau said, ‘life and philosophy.’ Into a philosophy
of iron, a philosophy of
strength, a philosophy of
eating for efficiency with
deliberateness, of exercising for efficiency with purpose, of exercising with a
deliberate mindset to taking myself to an upper, previously unknown to me,
level of pure physical
expression, of physical
endurance, and strength
and power.
In doing this I rethought
the way I did things. I
rethought the efficiency of
training, in how it was necessary to mix both power
as well as endurance training. I decided to take the
first of all kettlebell exercises, the swing, and take it
to a place I had never
known and that I did not think anyone else had ever gone
to take the swing literally as far as I possibly could, to literally climb a mountain with it. In doing so I got phenomenal results and my body came to be
reshaped by my mind and by the effort of this particular movement.
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I lost 120 pounds yet I kept most, if not all, of the strength and muscle that I had and even gained
new strengths, specifically in reshaping my idea of strength. I’ve always had a broad mind towards
strength and I believe you ought to as well. This broadened that horizon even more to the importance of sustained power and its role in strength, the importance of its role in mastery of self.
I believe if you’re really going to remake yourself into iron then you need a level of mastery both
of yourself and of the tool that you use. What is mastery? Mastery, in my opinion, is connected to
learning the tool, learning its uses, learning its techniques and expressing them with both vigor
and exactness. It also refers to forcing yourself to the upper level of what can be done with that
particular tool, the upper level of performance.
I WILL BE IRON
The photo on the left was taken at a time when I was unable to weigh on conventional bathroom scales. The
last number I had seen on a scale was 385lbs, however I personally believe I was in excess of 400lbs at the
time this picture was taken. It was only after I began losing weight that I would go and weigh myself at a
scrap yard till I was able to use a household scale again.
385 lbs
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I didn’t think it was enough to give myself an out and say, “I’ll just do a few reps here and
there.” I had to do as many reps as humanly possible. I had to go as high as I possibly could. I had
to go as long as I possibly could. To go as far as I possibly could, because driving yourself through
this heat and forge and crucible is the only way to get that deliberate remaking. To build that
deliberateness into your life, to build that power, that iron into your life. To remake yourself into
iron. To make your best life.
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Can a strongman lose 120
pounds and still maintain
his power and strength—
You be
the judge
Pressing a 250lb+ rock in the mountains in Washington state.
WHY THE
SWING
W
ell, the swing is first amongst all kettlebell exercises and all the exercises of
the kettlebell derive directly off that first step. I believe that many people
overlook it and jump quickly past it to other exercises when they really
ought to spend the amount of time necessary to develop their own mastery
of that particular movement. All things work together off the basics. The best people in the world
at any endeavor are the best at the basic movement, and the basic movement of the kettlebell is the
swing.
I also believe it has possibly the most benefits of any kettlebell exercise. Let me explain. The
swing is possibly the most diversely spread out exercise of the human body. It exerts muscular and
aerobic effort on every area and system of the body. The explosive snap of the swing builds hip,
hamstring, back, quad, abdominal, and shoulder strength. It works grip strength. It works explosive speed. It spreads the focus out onto the body so that many, many muscles, if not all the muscles of the body, are activated at one time.
In doing so, it allows you to push further, harder, and faster than almost any other exercise and
with a simple movement. It allows you to literally drive the body as hard as you can without localized fatigue becoming the stopping factor. In many other exercises, the push up for example, the
chest, shoulder and triceps, being the emphasis of that exercise, will tend to fail before the cardiovascular system or before your whole body as a unit is exhausted. The swing allows you to circumvent that.
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I WILL BE IRON
When you fail with the swing, especially after you’ve had a period of breaking in and a period
of training time, you fail for one of two reasons. Complete exhaustion pushing the muscles, the
endurance, and the internal organs and mind as far as humanly possible, versus failure of any
individual specific system. In doing that, you have a key to upper level performance. Something
that allows you, literally, to keep going, to test your mind, to test your lungs, to test your muscles
and every area of the body. A systematic way to add to the strength of every area involved. The
second reason is you just don’t want to go any farther.
The swing also has, I believe, the most carryover to other kettlebell exercises, as well as other
exercises for any other part of strength. For instance, power lifting, strength exercises, barbell lifting, odd object lifting, strongman exercises and endurance in any form. It will allow you to build
a type of grounded strength that almost nothing else can do.
That makes the swing the most effective choice for all our purposes. Why wouldn’t you use the
most effective tool, exercise and system to get the most change and advancement into Ironstrength and your best life?
THE
PICTURES
IN THIS BOOK AND
WHAT’S WRONG
WITH “FITNESS”
TODAY
M
uch of the mainstream training you read about and most of the pictures you
see in mainstream fitness are a lie. You may notice compared to most “fitness” books that the pictures of the people in this book, myself included,
may not be perfect. Now some of the people in this book are exactly what
the mainstream fitness media would consider physical specimens and beautiful. Some are not.
I’ve chosen to include many before and after pictures of myself and even after losing 120 pounds
I still don’t look mainstream “perfect.” This is purposeful.
We’ve chosen not to do what most of them do which is retouch, airbrush or modify photos,
because this book is written for real people and the look that is foisted on most of those people as
“perfect,” is fake and unattainable. Even the perfect people of the fitness industry don’t look it
except in specialized photography. That is why we’ve chosen to keep this real. We’ve also chosen
not to lie to you about what it takes to do this training. Or to tell you that judging your fitness by
how you look is really healthy. The swing is work. Plain and simple. Everyone who has ever
done any reasonable amount of them will tell you so. All the factors that play into your health
and life should be considered, but comparing yourself against a narcissistic idealized and unreal
standard is a black hole.
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I WILL BE IRON
We’ve also included pictures of men and women from every walk of life – different ages, different sizes, different body types because I want you to see what it really looks like when real people
do the swing. Someone in here will be close to you and you can see what their form looks like and
know that anybody can do this.
This training will give you what you want. Incredible body composition change and burn massive amounts of body fat. It will also radically build strength, muscle, aerobic capacity, work
capacity, explosiveness, health and you will do it while still being able to live a real life and eat real
food and with minimal time investment for incredible gains. You still may or may not come out
looking like you were drawn like a comic book hero or heroine. You will come out on the other
side with incredible gains. Real gains and real ability, but you have to happy with you before you
ever worry about looking perfect.
MY STORY
AND
WHY THIS WILL
WORK FOR
“ANYBODY!”
I
thought I should give you some background about myself to help explain why I believe
this training is so incredibly cool and why it’s effective, why I’m living proof of that and
that if it’s effective for me it can literally be effective for anybody.
I’ve been a big guy all my life. Now I’ll admit I was fat but I don’t suggest you poke a growling
bear about things like that if you’re standing within paw’s distance. I’ve been fat since I was six
years old. I had a car accident at five, was in an immobilizing body cast for months, had to learn
to walk again and during that time gained a great deal of weight that never came off.
Add this to a couple more factors: I have great strength genetics, but the world’s worst when it
comes to fat loss. Everybody in my family is big stretching back a hundred years or more. Now
that doesn’t mean couch potato big, there’s lots of muscle and ability that went along with this. (I
had a cousin who once punched out a dairy cow that kicked him… Don’t ask). That however
might actually make cutting fat worse. Let me explain - If you get fat because you sat around and
ate too many Doritos it’s generally not that tough to get thin if you get active and put the Doritos
down. However if you got or stay fat even when you’re active and in shape it really takes something to drop it.
I was in shape and fit from a cardiovascular/endurance standpoint before I ever started dropping weight. In fact the combination of being huge and strong AND having mind numbing
endurance is my specialty. I can (and have) regularly done thousands of reps of bodyweight exercises and all kinds of conditioning work along with lots of super heavy lifting. I competed in pow-
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I WILL BE IRON
erlifting (30+ state, regional, national and world records and Raw Drug-Free World Champion),
strongman (Florida Champion), Highland Games (Cassleberry “B” Division Champion , moved
up to “A” division). No-holds Barred fighting (1-1), Toughman (1-1), Highland Wrestling
(Champ at Port St. Lucie and Culloden), Kettlebell Sport (Florida Champ) and worked professionally as a speaker and performing old time style strongman. I was doing feats like bending
spikes, pressing grown men overhead with one hand and backlifting 10 or more people. Even
with all that I could never really get lean.
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305 lbs
285 lbs
So when I decided to change directions in training I was no amateur, but all the training and
experimenting had lead me to think that even though I had already found paths to and proven
that you can have fantastic strength, muscle and endurance all together that there was more. I felt
that this was really the start of opening a new door on human performance. (At least for me and
maybe for you too).
You see that’s another reason I never got lean. I really don’t care much about how you or I look.
I want to know what you can DO. For me it meant nothing to be lean if you’re not strong and I
know plenty of guys who are leaner than me but I’m more fit (by a great deal) than them. Add
that to the fact that I spent the first 16 years of my training life pursuing a 1,000lb Squat (a feat
you don’t do without drugs and powerlifting suits and wraps without being massive) gaining massive amounts of muscle and bodyweight. Also I’m from the deep South where even the air has
more calories in it than other places and from a family of farmers and gifted cooks. You could
I WILL BE IRON
make a case that it’s just too many calories and you’d be pretty accurate, but even when I purposely cut weight and dieted it wasn’t the really effective way I was looking for.
So in this new direction I began to believe that I could. I could have not just great endurance but
super human endurance and be extremely strong at the same time. I began to think of training and
eating to force my body to a new level of hardness. Of resistance to fatigue and an ability and
vitality that was on a whole new level.
Now it wouldn’t be truthful or fair to say I didn’t change the way I ate. I did. However I wasn’t
a big Doritos muncher in the first place. A big eater, yes and still am at times. I began to think of
making the body the most efficient that it can be with both training and food, not just mindlessly
throwing more fuel to the tank. At the same time I don’t believe in being deprived (on a long term
basis), or that any particular food is evil in its natural state. That is the important part and the
biggest change I made. I ate basically anything I wanted with the stipulation that it must be from
natural sources, in its natural way of existence. (Example: I eat bread, but it’s homemade and truly
whole wheat and has few total ingredients versus packaged bread which is “fake” wheat and has
like 50 ingredients).
My general pattern of training during this time was three to four sessions per week. Generally
one or two devoted to heavy lifting (often mixed with conditioning between heavy sets). One short
intense cardiovascular training session and one devoted exclusively to the swing. Because I train
lots of different physical abilities simultaneously and because of the effort and load of the swing
workouts I found it best to keep them to about once a week. (Two times if the other session is part
of the intervals or strength work and less volume). I had been doing 100-300 swings as part of
other workouts and I decided to up this to 500 straight swings. I started with the 24kg (53lb)
bell and used this as a period of base building. It’s from here I began to realize the mountain you
can climb and the new room of performance you can enter with the swing. I was using the onehand swing and switching hands in the air every ten reps. My goal was to push my muscles and
cardiovascular system as far as I could without stopping and let my grip endurance which was my
weakness catch up.
I usually trained this in a “sprint” style which means I went as far as I could without putting the
bell down then rested as little as plausible, picked it up and kept going and repeating until I finished the prescribed number of reps as fast as possible. Then next time through I tried to do more
reps unbroken and finish the total reps faster. I began to see that 500 reps with the 24kg was just
the jumping off point. It became clear that you could incrementally increase your weight or working load and number of unbroken reps and total number of reps and decrease your times until you
had literally doubled or tripled or exponentially increased your work capacity. As my reps went up
and times went down I then began to start cycling the kettlebells I used and my progress shot
through the roof.
My goals became more clearly defined. First it was 300 reps unbroken, then 400 reps in 10 minutes or unbroken, then 500 reps in 15 minutes or unbroken. Then 1000 reps total. Then the most
reps I could do in one hour. Then the fastest time through for 1000 reps. Every time it was cycling
the goals through all the bells: 53, 70, 88, 106 and then I added a loadable handle to go to 125lbs
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for one-hand swings. I found that the heaver bells immediately made me PR with the lighter bells
for unbroken reps, total number of possible reps, and rep times. I kept track of each. I also got the
same PR’s every time I went back up to the heavier bell from the lighter bell. Even though it was
heavier my total unbroken time swinging ability had gone up with the lighter bell. The heavier bell
then made the lighter bell feel like a toy and I PR’d the next workout with it. A double ended pay
off to every cycle.
Then my “swing universe” began to expand even more. I experimented with different ways to
do these cycles coming up with the 13 variations you’ll see in the book. Next 2000 reps became a
goal. Then 1000 reps unbroken became a goal. Then 2000 reps in under one hour. Then 3000
reps and I’m still cycling through them. My posterior chain became like steel and the DOMS
(delayed onset muscle soreness) and next one-to-three day fatigue became almost non-existent.
My strength stayed high, my grip strength and endurance went way up. My overall endurance
which was already good went crazy and I was able to apply it across many mediums with incredible success. (Grappling, strongman, bodyweight, heavy bag, sledgehammers, intervals, stairs,
etc.) My forearms started showing veins and weight just fell off. That is the craziest thing- even
though I was in great shape before this took me to a whole new world and burned fat off infinitely
better and faster than anything else ever has – in fact it’s the only thing that’s ever gotten me lean.
So how much did I actually progress empirically during this time? Well, from my all time highest bodyweight of 385 pounds I’m down to 270. That’s 115lbs total. I’ve lost 15 inches off my
waist and am wearing pants smaller than when I was in high school. I can still one arm shoulderpress and snatch a 150lb dumbbell, one arm row 300lbs, do 10 rep sit ups with 600lbs on my
chest, bend spikes, and do partial squats with far over 1,000 pounds. The first time I did 1000
swings with a 53lb/24kg bell it took 45 minutes. Since then here are my best:
24kg/53lb –
2000 reps unbroken in :48:00
2350 reps in :60:00
3000 reps in 1:39:00
4000 reps in 2:50:00
32kg/70lb –
1000 reps unbroken in :24:00
2000 reps in :59:00
40kg/88lb –
500 reps in :14:00
1000 reps in :30:00
2000 reps in 1:27:00
48kg/106lb – 1000 reps in :45:00
57kg/126lb – 500 reps in :35:00
80kg/176lb – (two-hand swing w/ t-handle) 500 reps in :44:00
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As you can see I’ve doubled the workload in half the time. Is there more to go? Absolutely. If
you want real progress to super ability you gotta do what no one else is willing to do. You can. If
this can work for a guy who has terrible fat loss genetics and eats healthy but refuses to eat like a
concentration camp victim then it can work for you, for anybody – Man, woman, genetically
gifted or not. That’s why this is set up the way it is and why it’s so effective. It’s the most effective
fat loss exercise set up in a way that it doesn’t require insane amounts of time to do. Anybody can
learn to swing, can swing safely and effectively and can squeeze in one hard session per week. I’m
not going to lie – I already told you it wasn’t easy. But if you do the work it’ll work for you no
matter who you are. Along the way you’ll also get incredible physical ability, burn massive body
fat and gain in mental and life strength in a way that you can’t with any other training.
A
SPECIAL NOTE TO WOMEN:
The weights used in this book are specific to me and the training I used. I want you to understand that the weights you choose should be appropriate to where you are in your own training and
what feels comfortable to your body. So don’t be alarmed when you read me referring to 24, 32,
40, 48 and more kg heavier bells. Start with 8, 10, 12, 16 – whatever you need to start with. Just
remember you are stronger than you think and you can work up to high reps with heavy bells.
The same pair of jeans
s.
are worn in both photo
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Don't let anyone tell you nutrition and healthy eating means flavorless, torturous meals. By learning how to
adjust your cooking you can have the foods you enjoy and lose weight. You must learn to eat and cook in
ways that you can adapt to for your lifetime.
What's for breakfast?
Oatmeal with bananas,
fresh raspberries or
blueberries, honey and
coconut oil"
Growing your own foods is preferable as
we've done here, but always try to go with
fresh, organic and/or locally grown.
Yes you can still have pancakes and lose
weight! My wife's whole wheat, oat and flax
pancakes with fresh blueberries contain no
sugar and I prefer Tupelo honey to syrups.
Pizza was still on the menu during my weight
loss and continues to be. Heather's homemade
whole wheat pizza crust and homemade pizza
sauce with our garden tomatoes. She uses the
old Italian trick of grated carrots to sweeten
the sauce instead of sugars. This one is topped
with shredded grilled chicken, black beans,
sauteed onions and peppers along with her
herbs and seasonings.
A
WORD
AND SOME
TIPS ON FOOD
M
any people will really be reading this book for its weight loss aspects. I said
this very clearly in the book, but I want to reiterate it. While the swing is
incredibly effective for burning body fat even if you don’t change your diet
no one who makes real massive body recomposition change is honest if they
don’t speak about food. You simply can’t outwork bad food and no matter how in shape you are
you’re not healthy if you keep shoveling garbage into your body.
Here are some tips on food that helped me.
1. Natural food is key
The least processed, closest to organic food you can reasonably get your hands on. Debate or no
debate excessive processing and chemical additives to food makes it unhealthy – plain and simple.
2. No one has the Holy Grail on dieting
No matter what they tell you every nutritional system that is effective and healthy from around
the world boils down to point number one. Regardless of meal timing, nutrient ratios, etc., the
one common food is natural food. Many people get great results on wildly different programs.
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3. Try two-meals a day
Many of the old time health gurus advocated this particular eating plan and it’s my system as
well. For reasons too vast to cover in this tip I think it may be the perfect meal frequency plan for
weight loss. It allows you to keep your calories under control, really digest your food, experience
hunger, but not to the point you go insane and radically overeat.
4. Be conscious of the calories you are drinking
Most people drink a ton more calories than they realize from all kinds of drinks. You can easily in ten minutes drink more calories than you can burn in an hour of exercise.
5. Change one thing at a time.
Most people only have a small amount of available personal discipline to use in changing their
lifestyle. Dieting is trash. Only make changes to your food intake that you can live with for the
long term. Small changes mastered stick. Depravation dieting backfires.
We purposely avoided in-depth discussion of nutrition because it simply will not fit in this book
and we will discuss it thoroughly in an upcoming book on diet. Take control of your health by
what you eat. Be strong and eat strong food.
HOW TO
PERFORM
THE
SWING
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1.
Place the kettlebell in front of you directly between the legs and 12-18” ahead of your feet. Assume
a stance a bit wider than shoulder-width. Keep the knees stationary and back straight, hinge at the
hips pushing your butt backward to lean down and grab the kettlebell.
2.
Grab the kettlebell with one or two hands. If you grab with one hand off-set slightly into the horn as
is shown in the above picture. Stand with the kettlebell keeping the back straight, inhale, keep the
feet planted well into the ground.
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3.
Forcefully contract the lats and force your hips backward swinging the bell back between your legs.
Do not go straight down or let the knees track forward. By pushing the bell well backward and keeping the spine straight you will powerfully load the hamstrings, hips and entire posterior chain.
4.
Powerfully snap the hips forward keeping the lat contracted and the arms straight and loose. Your
arms should carry the kettlebell as directed by the force of the hips, but not actively lift it.
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5.
Contract the abdominals and forcefully blow your air out. At this point you should be completely
straight up and down, hips forward, entire body as square as possible. With the two-hand swing
you should be perfectly square and you can see from the picture from the one-hand swing you may
be slightly adjusted to the kettlebell side. Now actively pull the bell back down, breath in and do
the next rep.
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THE REACH
BACK TEACHING
TECHNIQUE
I learned this from Andrea DuCane at
the RKC. It’s a favorite teaching technique. It quickly teaches you to optimally load the hamstrings. You can see
that mine are loaded in the picture. You
simply place a board/clip board/pad,
behind the swinger and the object is push
the bell back with the hips, hamstrings
and lats while keeping the low back tight
until you hear the bell touch the board.
Once you do it you’ll know exactly how
it feels to load the hamstrings and be
able to carry it over to all of your swing
practice.
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TARGET SWINGS
To my knowledge no one else does this. It’s something I came up with to answer a criticism and
have found it a valuable training/progression technique. One of the criticisms of the swing is that
it’s an open chain exercise, meaning there are no top or bottom stop points. I actually believe this
is part of what makes the swing so incredible and is actually a plus instead of a minus, because
there is literally no stop.
However something you may find as you get into really high reps is that it’s hard to maintain
the height you swing to. I don’t believe height in the swing is particularly important. It’s more
about direction of force and explosive snap. However if you do this solves the problem. You
place a board or anything that doesn’t create a surface that will throw you off if you hit it, at
exactly the height you think it’s important to swing to. When you swing touch the board with the
bell. In this way you can know you’ve gone exactly the same distance and height with every swing
It effectively creates a top position without making it a stopping point. In progression it can be
used when you swing very heavy bells by setting the board at a starting height and then in subsequent sessions raising it by an inch or so, so that you have to swing higher to hit it.
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TOWEL SWINGS
Towel swings are one of the perfect assistance exercises to the swing. Maybe the fastest learning tool for doing the swing correctly. By themselves they are a tremendous grip training tool, but
in learning the swing they literally make it almost impossible to do wrong. They force you to
push backward instead of down thereby hinging instead of squatting. If you squat too low the
bell hits the ground.
The momentum added by the length of the towel teaches you to push backward and load the
hips and hamstrings. It teaches you to direct the force into the bell with your body instead of
your hand. It teaches you not to lift with your arm or “scoop” by bending the arm or dropping
the hips. If you do any of those the bell doesn’t stay in line with your arm as shown in the picture. The bell will lag or be lower that it should be.
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DOUBLE SWINGS
This is an excellent power exercise. The heavier you go with the double bell or THandle swings that you’ll see demonstrated later in the book the better you’ll perform
with the one-hand high rep swings. However the technique on all of them is the same.
Heavy two-hand swings fit perfectly into the intense cardio routines and give you the
optimal situation to practice 100% explosiveness and tension.
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WALL SQUATS
Another favorite RKC teaching technique. The point here is not to necessarily squat superdeep. The point is that it forces you to push the butt backward and not allow your knees to track
forward by practicing this your body begins to learn the right nerve patterns to swing. People
that can’t get the idea of not squatting down or pushing their knees forward need to do this.
SWING
TRAINING
WHAT
THE SWING
DID FOR ME—
MAXIMIZING
THE SWING
Number One:
Massive fat loss. Listen, the swing was the primary cause of me losing over 100 pounds, almost
all fat. I kept almost all the muscle and lost a massive amount of fat. Now, why is that? I believe the
swing is maybe the ultimate, if not, very close to the ultimate, fat loss exercise. Why? Because it is
both explosive as well as rhythmic and endurance based.
Number Two:
No matter what they tell you every nutritional system that is effective and healthy from around
the world boils down to point number one. Regardless of meal timing, nutrient ratios, etc., the
one common food is natural food. Many people get great results on wildly different programs.
There are other tools that will help you do this, but the swing is my preferred and one the most
awesome tools to do it. Why? Because it’s very difficult for the body to get the signal to let muscle
mass go, even on a restricted calorie diet, when you are constantly using almost every muscle of
the body, working together as a unit consistently with explosive, high force effort giving the body
powerful signals.
The body will adapt to whatever you give it or ask of it. The point and the process there being
that when you constantly use and work those muscles hard, even if the swing is fairly light, you
get hard muscular contraction. Guess what? The body constantly gets the signal to preserve that
muscle. Its only other option is to strip fat off.
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Number Three:
I’ve maintained, even with a 120 pound weight loss, all, or almost all of my strength. Now during the time I did this, I had some injuries that did not let me train a few of the exercises that I had
formally specialized on very much. A few of the exercises that I do, for instance barbell squats
especially really, really heavy squats are in significant ways, dependent on body mass for leverage.
So I might have lost a few pounds on that lift, but from a pure muscular strength standpoint, I lost
nothing or next to nothing. Interestingly I actually gained strength in several areas.
Number Four:
I’ve massively gained grip strength and it’s kind of a surprising side benefit of the swing. You
use a thick handled kettlebell, use it over, and over and over again, and it forces a massive amount
of blood flow into the forearms, as well as the continuous hard gripping.
Now, are you squeezing the bell has hard as you can on every rep? No not on every rep when
you’re doing high rep swings. Although you definitely are squeezing it when you do heavy 1 2
handed swings. You are constantly keeping the hand and forearm flexed.
What does that do? The forearm is one of those muscles, like the abdominals and the calves and
neck muscles that gets continuous use all the time. Because they give such continuous use, they are
geared slightly differently in the way that their muscles are structured. They often benefit from a
maximum strength standpoint, from very high volume and repetition training, even if the weight
is not terribly heavy. Most muscles and exercises won’t do that. I’ve gotten that benefit and I’m
not the only one.
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In fact, in losing over 100 pounds, I didn’t lose any size at all off my forearms. For the first time
in my life, they showed veins sticking out, which is incredibly difficult for a guy who carried massive amounts of body fat since childhood.
Number Five:
I lost none, and in fact gained, a lot of back strength. Now what does that mean? That means
you literally work your posterior chain with a swing as hard as you can possibly work it. Your
hamstrings, hip and back work like a locomotive. Even though I dropped massive amounts of
weight, I lost next to nothing on my deadlift, and especially on my partial deadlift, and the exercises that fit my body well to test my back muscles.
So in theory, basically in every other type of endurance workout known to man, when you
work for the long duration exercises (like I did with the swing), you supposedly teach the muscles,
“to be enduring, but not contract as hard.” You gear the muscles away from maximum strength.
Mine, however, didn’t work that way. Because again you’re using that explosive movement over
and over again, so even in endurance format, you’re teaching the muscle to be strong, as well as
incredibly enduring.
Number Six:
I gained massive abdominal strength increases. I already had strong abs, but it was incredible
that I continued to have PR abdominal strength tests and workouts after losing over 100 pounds.
You would think I would lose
leverage there, except for specific
abdominal exercises that require a
significant amount of flexibility or
benefit from lighter bodyweight. I
was able to do sit ups with 600
pounds, (700 pounds is coming
soon), sitting on my chest, which
nobody else in the world has done.
600 lb weighted
sit-ups
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I attribute much of that gain to working the swing very hard. Why? Because that off center
loading of the 1-hand swing constantly keeps your core flexed. Because the abdominals also are
consistently, explosively firing, they are continually building strength, even with a lighter weight.
By doing that you make progress in abdominal strength and in your ability to keep your core, or
your abdominals, stable under load, and especially under endurance loads for long periods of
time, which is a unique skill almost nobody has.
It worked out to incredible abdominal strength for me. Even though I was training my abdominals hard, but I didn’t do anything different then I did before. The one difference was the massive
amounts of swing training.
Number Seven:
It allowed me to work around injuries – (a significant, huge amount of work), around things
that happened to me over that period of time. I injured my knee running, during this period of
time, which was just a freak thing. It happened.
I have some pretty good miles on me from the amount of incredibly hard and difficult training
that I’ve done over the course of a lifetime. Does that mean you can’t and shouldn’t do that?
Absolutely not. Does it mean I did anything wrong? Absolutely not. It just means that you can’t
drive a racecar 200 miles an hour all the time without getting a ding here and there, which is what
I’ve done.
The swing allowed me to work around a significant knee injury and a significant shoulder/bicep
injury that I got from grappling. Were they related to anything I was doing strength wise? No.
They were related to other exercises and other activities that I choose to engage in.
The swing will allow most people to work around a wide range of injuries or keep going even
with “high miles.” Why? Because it doesn’t force you to move into extreme positions. It stretches
and strengthens the hamstrings and everything at the same time without overworking the knee
joints, hip joints, the back especially the back because of the neutral spine position is stabilized
as well as made stronger without receiving a huge amount of loading at the same time. Now, the
load on the muscle is high, but the load on the vertebrae is not, which is a huge benefit there.
It also allows many people to work around bicep and shoulder problems, which it certainly
allowed me to do, without aggravating the shoulders or the biceps from an excessive amount of
shock in the exercise or an excessive amount of pull on sensitive areas.
It allowed me to work consistently and not have to skip workouts, even though I had significant injury and pain. It’s simply an exercise that allows you to get a massive amount of bang for
your buck.
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Number Eight:
It didn’t cause or aggravate more injuries even though I did massive volume. Now, what does
that mean? That means a lot of the things that people do, if you do it enough to create an
endurance format for instance, running creates a tremendous amount of pounding on the body.
Up-Dog Position
There are a great many exercises that force the body into unnatural positions or to tolerate
unnatural amounts of force in unusual ways, or simply don’t work for certain people. Certain
people can’t row for long periods of time; it just aggravates their back. Some people can’t run.
Bigger guys especially often can’t run or do a volume of that particular type of exercise, usually
because of the knee problems it causes.
The swing, however, creates all the strength benefits and ten times the endurance benefits for
most people with little or no pounding on the body. It’s very easy in general on the body and, in
fact, is a builder to the body instead of a damager.
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Number Nine:
It created hamstrings of steel
for me and let me run again.
Now, I did tell you earlier that
I got a knee injury running,
which was simply an unfortunately misstep and probably
speaks to the fact that if you’re
280 330 pounds and you’re
running, it’s pretty hard on
you.
I had been an athlete all
through school. I had been a
football player and, of course,
running is a part of that. I had
never been very good at running. I had been pretty good at
short sprints; never good at
longer sprints, never good at
long distance running, or stair
or hill running.
After I left football, I got significantly into heavy power lifting
and strongman, and getting as big
as I possibly could and as strong
as I possibly could for a long
period of time.
Visual of hamstring/
pment
posterior chain develo
Now during that training time, I didn’t run very much. Even though I don’t feel like I had much
muscular imbalance, I feel like I had a sequencing imbalance in the strengths of my hamstrings,
quads and hips that came off when I began to run again.
Why? Because every time I went to try to run again or did any significant sprinting, I would
inevitably pull a hamstring. I feel like this is one of the greatest benefits of the swing in that you can
make your hamstrings incredibly powerful and incredibly resistant to injury simply by training it.
I know it worked that way for me. My hamstrings could not tolerate hard running. I was flexible. I had every other thing necessary no reason for the injuries that I got from running to happen
except for the fact that I believe the hamstring simply could not tolerate, in a stretch position, the
power that it could put out. I had gained so much power that when I applied it in running it was
too much for the muscle. The swing corrected all of that.
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Number Ten:
Massive cardiovascular power. Listen, I was already in good shape when I started swing training.
When I started this super high volume crazy swing training. I was 360+ pounds but I was in better
shape than most people at 160 pounds. I could do 1,000 reps of different body weight exercises. I
could do lots of stuff. I’d been a fighter. I’d been an athlete of all kinds. I was in good shape.
However my cardiovascular power took on a whole other level. My resting heart rate dropped
from 80 or slightly less to less than 60, into the low 50s. My ability to employ that cardiovascular
power and therefore the rest of my organs, lungs, etc., went insane. Everything else that benefits
from power endurance became incredible in applying it across a multitude of situations.
For instance, and this will lead me to my next point, I could display that same cardiovascular
power when I was lifting heavy for different exercises or when I was doing other endurance exercises, in a way that I was never able to do before.
I did “okay” and built some endurance that I could display when I was lifting heavy, however
lifting heavy still seemed to tax me more than it should have. Switching from different endurance
exercises back and forth didn’t feel like I got nearly as much carryover as I could have. Not like I
got when I truly got into super shape and my heart and lungs really got strong from the swing.
Now, one of the reasons I believe the swing does that, is
that it is one of the, if not the most, “all over” exercise you
can do. It equally taxes so many muscles that you literally
force the heart and lungs to work just about as hard or
harder than anything else that it can do. With so much
blood flow going all over the body as well as so many muscles working, your fatigue is such a general nature that you
can literally work yourself in the ground before everything
quits. This forces the heart and lungs to go harder than
they’ve ever done and makes them stronger than they’ve
ever been.
Dr. Derrick Stansberry, DVM demonstrates
swings with the loadable D-Handle bell.
Also one of the most interesting and
unique individuals we train with. Former
rodeo rider, semi-pro baseball players and
MMA/Jiu Jitsu player, Also does 1,000 rep
swings, 250lb windmills and flips an 800lb
tire at 6’4” and 200lbs. We’ve nicknamed
him, “The World’s Most Dangerous
Veterinarian.”
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Number Eleven:
All around power and endurance. Listen, along the way with this swing training I also did 1,000
rep snatches, 1,000 rep push presses. I also did 1,000 rep sprawls, 1,000 rep mixed body weight
exercises, 1,000 plus rep sledge hammer workouts 1,000 rep dumbbell workouts, 1,000 rep “plate
conditioning,” workouts, mile long sled pulls, hour long heavy bag sessions, all concurrent with
and building into as well as significantly benefiting from the kettlebell swing.
The swing was the most common and
most worked factor in all of that training.
Now, I cycled the other ones in and
believe that they all work and flow
together, but I never got the benefit and
performance in them until I hit that
swing hard on a regular basis. Then I got
that endurance and power to flow all
around, and not just endurance for
endurance sake; endurance for power
sake.
I’m swinging a 40 plus pound sledge
hammer, push pressing heavier kettlebells, doing hard body weight exercises,
not just jogging for an hour. Which by
the way, I could never do before and I
could do once I got into swing an all
around level of power and endurance
that’s almost impossible to match.
D-Handle loadable
bell for
superheavy swings
Number Twelve:
I lowered my blood pressure and heart rate.
Now my heart rate and blood pressure were never bad to begin with even though I was 384
pounds at my highest. Why? Because I didn’t sit around eating nothing but junk food (although I
ate too much of it), and not exercise. I was still a world class athlete. I was just a huge world class
athlete who carried too much body fat.
I became better than I ever would have been by training the swing. Everything about me got
faster or slower depending on what it ought to be. For instance my blood pressure got lower. My
heart rate dropped 30 beats a minute by this swing training.
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Number Thirteen:
Lactic acid tolerance and soreness. This is very unique and I have somewhat of a difficult time
explaining it. The only way that I can explain this is that even though I was in good shape, I used
to get sore when I would switch exercises or change things around.
Now, I rarely ever get sore from a muscular standpoint and my tolerance for lactic acid is
incredibly increased. Why? I believe, again, that the general nature of the swing pushed to the ultimate levels, builds your body’s ability to buffer lactic acid. If less lactic acid hangs around in the
muscles, you get less sore. Also, because so many muscles get worked so regularly, all the time,
when you switch exercises, those muscles are already in good shape.
So even when I would jump to circuits that included bench presses, and rows, and push ups,
and any other exercise in combination that should make you sore, I just didn’t get sore. I believe
all the muscles were touched so strongly that they are just in shape to do anything. Your ability to
buffer lactic acid is so much better that you’re able to both tolerate and process the burning of lactic acid, and that carries off into the massive increases in both endurance and power that you get.
Number Fourteen:
Build focus and Qi (or Chi). Now, this is a little esoteric for a lot of you guys, but this is, I
believe, the truth of this. I already had tremendous focus but maintaining high level focus for an
hour long session, well, there’s almost nothing like this training that to build that ability.
In other words, building the ability to stay on task, on point. Build your ability to keep every
aspect of your body focused and working in exactly the same direction. Focus under strain, under
pain, under difficult circumstances, is an incredible skill, and I think that the swing is maybe one
of the best ways in the world to build that.
Now, I mentioned “Qi” in this. I believe most hard training people have a resonably strong
internal energy about them. I believe internal energy has nothing to do with spirituality. It is
purely the electrical system and the magnetic system of the body that is built by the muscles, as
well as drives the muscles.
I believe that the high effort, rhythmic, focused, explosive, core based exercise of the swing
builds the muscles and as you build the muscles, you build their electrical activity. It also builds
the general energy of the body, which imparts more electrical energy into those muscles. You in
essence give yourself larger more powerful internal batteries.
Western training generally falls backwards into building, “Qi,” or life force. It’s what the old
time strongmen meant when they said, ‘Vital, strength, health and energy built by hard exercise.’
It’s also connected to what they called, “nerve force.” The Eastern philosophy tends to build the
Chi from the inside out, versus the outside in.
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Meaning, you do exercises specifically using the mind to manipulate the electrical system and
internal energy of the body, with the point of building healthier stronger muscles and a vital powerful organism.
I believe the swing, because of its rhythmic nature, allows you to focus for long, hard periods of
time. When you do that, you use the muscles to build a higher level Qi, and you use the Qi to
build higher level muscles. Both of which combine to a one plus one makes three sort of activity.
Number Fifteen:
The last thing, number 15, is mental toughness. Listen, I was already a pretty tough guy. I had
already done MMA fighting, I had already done amateur boxing, I had already done strongman
highland games, high level power lifting.
I did things with weights most people will never even think about doing, crazy stuff, but there’s
a level of mental toughness that cannot be accessed without this type of training.
The ability to drive yourself for literally an hour with no stopping or almost no stopping is an
incredible strength and life skill. The swing is maybe the most opportune way to do that. It allows
you to continually just go and go and go, if you’re tough enough and in shape enough to do it.
Getting in that kind of shape, training the swing, builds that toughness; builds your mind into
a rock hard, iron driving engine to your body. At some point you get past the physical in this
training and begin to have the ability to for it to be driven by the mind. You realize that you can
get that one more rep. It’s purely on how badly do you want to and how strong your mind is.
This is a tough area to train in because once you achieve that
physical amount of conditioning, you know that’s it’s all on your
mind. It’s all on how tough your mind is. That carries over to every
area of your life. That Friends is a big benefit!
Chuck Halbakken demonstrating the swing.
Chuck is one of the most interesting guys you
don’t know about. A former professional motorcycle racer, full contact fighter, black belt martial
artist who studied in multiple styles, consultant
to Fortune 500 companies, gym owner and kettlebell trainer and one of the best in the world at
the strongman feat of tearing playing cards. He
has used his life-long study and experience to
become one of the best on the planet at helping
people get mobile and pain free. You can check
his website at: www.F2strength.com
THE NEW WORLD
IN LONG OR
THIRD WAY
CARDIO
F
orever the general opinion and the real working definition for long duration cardio
training, (usually called long slow distance or long moderate to low intensity steady
state cardio), has been that is saps strength to build endurance.
In my opinion, almost all forms of long slow cardio are useless. The kettlebell is the new world
and the groundbreaker in this arena along with a few other types of explosive movements.
Muscular styles of cardiovascular training that go along with the kettlebell are building new paradigms in this arena.
It has been a generally accepted notion that if you wanted to be the strongest you could be you
could not do long slow distance cardio. It is true that running/jogging slow, long distances will
take away from your top end power. Concurrently I have also found that, the truth be told, people who have “difficult metabolisms,” like I had do not benefit nearly as much as is said from
short intense cardio, which is currently en vogue.
Now, I believe that there absolutely is a place and it absolutely is a must to have extremely
intense short duration cardiovascular and muscular training. I think the old idea of the words aerobic and anaerobic are in some senses nonsense. Everything you do one way or another requires
both muscular effort and aerobic or cardiovascular effort. They just happen at varying degrees.
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The same nonsense is the fat burning zones. Effort is effort, calories burned are calories burned
one way or another they’re both going to end up taking you, to a large extent, to the same place.
I have found that for me and for most people if they truly want to have massive changes in body
composition, and if you truly want to go beyond normal training, you have to get out of the box
and not do long slow cardio or rely solely on short intervals.
If your job requires that kind of running or your sport requires that kind of running, then by all
means do it. Understand it does take a toll on many of the types of other training you might wish
to engage in! Do what is necessary to avoid the overuse injuries and maximize your all around
performance. If you are training with a kettlebell or train with this type of difficult highly explosive muscular as well as long term cardio training, you get that same type of endurance without
paying the price in strength.
I paid little to no price in strength, but built massive endurance to the point where I could run
for an hour nonstop if I wanted to (did it just to test to see if I could). Now because I don’t practice running and I’ve never been very good at it, I won’t be very fast, but I can do it. My cardiovascular development and muscular development will allow me to do any of those long slow
sports without having specifically trained it. I won’t set world records there, because I’m not
training specifically for them (and I’m no runner), but I’m physically equipped with the ability to
do those things without specific training.
I believe that, truth be told, that for the caloric price, for the real fat burning and the real change
in body composition that most people want, you need to do more than 20 minutes. That’s why I
kept pushing and pushing and pushing the swing to the point where I was doing it for 48 minutes
nonstop; doing an hour or so almost completely nonstop. Because I believe you never really get to
the depths of your reserves, you never really get to the fat burning and the calorie burning that you
want unless you push to a higher level.
It’s wonderful to say I can get everything I want out of 15 minutes of cardio but it’s just not necessarily the truth for most people, certainly myself included. I also believe that most people that is
to say real people in the real world who eat real food and have real metabolisms (not 18 year old
college freshmen who are the subjects of most scientific experiments or genetically gifted or pharmaceutically enhanced professional athletes), simply don’t get the hormone stimulation that they
need from shorter training. What we’re looking for is a complete switch in gears in fat burning. I
believe to get that gear to switch, to turn those hormones on in a much more permanent way and
truly tap into fat reserves you need more than 15 minutes of training.
Certainly heavy training and intervals as we’ve referred to them as well as short intense cardiovascular training help and are part of flipping that switch and creating that hormone profile you
want, but I don’t believe it’s truly effective for regular people unless they get to this level of cardio
in training. The body is stubborn and adapts quickly to keep body fat. This particular cardio
doesn’t give the body a choice.
There is also a new level of cardiovascular training to be had here. Now, are you going to max
your heart rate the whole time? No, but you can get very close. That’s why I believe that this type
of training will lead you to the “never get tired again” level.
I WILL BE IRON
Justin Miller – 10 yrs old
proving that a person of
any age can achieve perfect form with the kettlebell swing. This implement allows children to
train endurance and
strength without causing
damage to their growing
bodies. Great for young
athletes and all-around
health.
Why? Because it gets you past the interval. Most people when they do hard cardio only train in
intervals, which means they go hard for 30 seconds then they rest, or hard for a minute and rest.
Well, I’m going, not 100%, but I am going 90% for a long, long extended period of time and so
there’s a difference. The difference is instead of 100% effort, pedal to the metal cardio which
you absolutely need and is a part of my weekly regimen I’m going 90+% effort cardio for
extended periods of time.
Therefore my intervals get better and the 100% effort of the intervals plays into my long cardio.
The long cardio done with those explosive movements does not take away from strength and
builds a level of pure resistance to fatigue that most people just don’t have.
I think it’s one of the only ways you can do high heart rate for extreme periods of time without
causing significant problems and the only way most people can do it. Most people will never be
able to run a fast enough pace for a long enough period of time to drive your heart rate as high as
I can keep mine for a complete hour by doing kettlebell work.
This plays into exactly what Marty Gallagher talks about as “Third Way Cardio” and building
on a more intense version of Dr. Leonard Schwartz, “Heavy Hands.” It literally is the end all of
that particular type of cardiovascular training. That is extreme continuity, extreme nonstop movement but at a high paced, high heart rate with heavier and heavier weights.
It also plays into something that John Brookfield told me. John is one of the most conditioned
athletes on the planet and said, “You must at some point get past the interval.” Meaning that
there is a level of conditioned strength that you can access both in your mind and in your body
that must be done if you wish to go to your top end and in doing this you must continuously do
hard things for long periods of time, i.e., the swing or jerk or whatever kettlebell movement nonstop for long periods of time. It is higher intensity than slow cardio, maybe not the 100% intensity of intervals but it allows you to keep pushing past the regular interval and learn not to quit
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I WILL BE IRON
after a preprogrammed 30 seconds. Yet in using the explosive muscular work against significant
resistance with fast pacing you are building strength not taking away from it and keeping your
heart rate sky high. Like an hour of continuous sprints without the rest or inherent drawbacks.
In some ways training all intervals all the time, while it may be helpful for some people, limits
you. It teaches you literally to stop. You only have to endure for 30 seconds or a minute or whatever versus enduring for 30 minutes or an hour or simply forcing your body and mind to come to
a place where you can’t and won’t give in to fatigue. That is the essence of true long cardio and the
benefit here is by using explosive movements you don’t take away from, you actually build into
your strength and you build incredible amounts of real world ability.
The real world doesn’t do a lot of long slow things. It does long fast paced things, but the ability to keep that up for longer than anybody else is a massive benefit both athletically as well as
psychologically. For most people the truth is if you don’t get to that level of high output for long
periods of time, you don’t get absolute heart health and you don’t get the absolute body composition change that you want.
STYLE
AND
TECHNIQUE OF
KETTLEBELL
LIFTING
T
here’s a lot being said in the athletic training world and in the kettlebell training
world specifically about what style of lifting you should use. Do you use the Hard
Style or the Girevoy sports style of training? Within those which style do you
specifically use? I think way too much is being made of some of this if not all of
it. I have some specific thoughts here.
Let me give a bit of explanation if this happens to be your first exposure to kettlebells.
Kettlebells are one of the original lifting implements of mankind. Something resembling a kettlebell can be traced to many ancient strength cultures. In the modern sense when exercise began to
gain in popularity there were the barbell, dumbbell and kettlebell. With the advent of the discloading barbell, barbells and dumbbells took a mainstream leap ahead and moved west into western Europe and America. The kettlebell migrated east into eastern Europe and Russia. Basically
with a few exceptions it disappeared from the American/European mainstream exercise scene.
Fast forward to the turn of this century and Pavel Tsatsouline begins re-introducing America to
the kettlebell. In that intervening hundred years the kettlebell as an exercise tool developed a completely different paradigm for use. Most mainstream trainers use barbells and dumbbells always
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looking for a heavier weight for a pre-set number of reps. The kettlebell lends itself and is used
much more by always looking for more repetitions in a given amount of time. The style that we
were first introduced to is Pavel’s style and it marries that strength-endurance style to the tension
techniques of heavy lifting and hard style Karate. Hence the name: Hard-Style.
This series of pictures demonstrates a two-handed swing with a T-Handle implement loaded to 225.bs. You can see the same rules always apply one-handed or
two-handed no matter the weight. Pick the weight with good form, backswing
powerfully between the legs, snap the hips forward explosively to drive the
weight through and flow to the top.
I WILL BE IRON
Part of the development of the kettlebell during those years was the evolution of kettlebell lifting as a sport called Girevoy Sport. While the exercises themselves don’t change the performance
style does. In its base the sport is contested for ten minute long sets with limited or no hand
switches or putting the bell down. This requires a very specific style to complete the most reps in
the competition time periods. Kettlebell lifting in the sport style is set to give maximum efficiency
within the rules of the sport. It requires a more relaxed style of lifting to take advantage of the
time limits and the body’s ability to endure. Same things – different style.
In regard to debate between different styles I want to say, I don’t wish to insult anyone. It’s
unfortunate that many people take stylistic debate as some kind of personal affront. Good technique should be employed at any given time on any particular kettlebell exercise. The best technique you have coaching for, as well as efficient technique, but for my purposes in the real world,
I don’t wish to use an extremely relaxed technique.
I wish to use more muscular tension than most people employ in a Girevoy sports style. What
I’ve come to is, for the most part of my kettlebell training, (except when I’m doing specific interval work), I’m using a Hard Style approach for Girevoy sports style timing.
What does that mean? That means most of the style and technique that I use, the swing is from
the hard style. The press is from the hard style. The way I hold the kettlebell within the rack is the
hard style, but I’m using it in a time pattern of the Girevoy sport, for 10 minutes, 20 minutes or
an hour, nonstop (or as close to nonstop as possible).
That doesn’t mean I follow the sport rules exactly with the single hand switch or not putting the
bell down. It does mean that I use a much harder style of pacing. My idea is not to do a paced repetition per minute (usually), but every repetition should be as fast and powerful as possible.
I don’t want to relax. At the same time I don’t want to over fatigue myself. The tension is what
is appropriate for the speed I wish to employ and the level of bell that I’m using. In doing so, I feel
like I get the best of both worlds.
What I get is the strength and the explosion work from the hard style as well as the faster pacing and the more intense work carried out for longer periods of time than most people wish to do,
using the sort of Girevoy sports style of timed set. The big point is working as hard as possible,
as long as possible.
Now here are the advantages and the reasons I do this. What I am doing is ultimately building
up to the fastest pace, hardest exercise I can do, for the longest period of time, instead of a relaxed
pacing kept for a long period of time. Ultimately we end up at the same place. I just use less relaxation.
In the real world, if it’s for combat or for other training progress, you’re going to learn to relax,
even in the Hard style, you’re going to learn some relaxation. You’re going to have relaxation
between reps etc., but I’m going to keep a faster pace with a more explosive movement. To be
able to access that in an endurance format for longer periods of time.
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Meaning I’m not going to just purely be relaxed. I’m going to be able to turn my tension to high
level, off and on, very quickly over and over and over again for a longer period of time. I believe
that’s actually the upper level. To use the Hard style, but use it for that long period of time.
That way you get harder effort, not necessarily the most “efficient” effort, but the harder effort
maintained for a longer period of time. One of the great strongmen of the turn of the century, a
Frenchman named “Appollon,” (Louis Uni) refused to use what he called “scientific lifting,”
which was the at that time the genesis of Olympic lifting techniques and simply believing in brute
power for what he lifted. This is a similar idea. It’s not “un-scientific,” it just doesn’t take advantage of technical points to make the lifts easier.
Now, should you use the absolute best technique available? Yes. Do you need to do it in the
most relaxed or the most ultimately efficient format? Not necessarily, because when you use it
without using those overly scientific techniques, you build power that gains into the real world.
Mary Gosnell – Jiu Jitsu Champion swings a 32kg bell for reps at 120lb bodyweight.
Mary is also an artist, a student and legally blind. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be
strong! Note: Due to Mary’s sight her form may appear to be off regarding the head tilt.
When you swing a sledge hammer enough, you’ll get “efficient” as you get used to it. The
movement, however stays hard, it stays explosive. It doesn’t follow such a precise groove all the
time that you over gain from efficiency.
Any move that you practice thousands and thousands of time you will gain massive “neural
efficiency.” Neural efficiency refers to the fact that any exercise you practice especially for very
high repetitions your body builds stronger nervous pathways and literally becomes more efficient
at the exercise. It therefore takes less effort to do the same movement once you’ve achieved maximum efficiency. This is both good and bad. You must achieve maximum neural efficiency to
have the best performance at what you do, however maximum efficiency means less effort per
repetition which means less caloric burn and strength gain in the broad sense. You will find this
to be true as part of your progress within the swing and the press or any other kettlebell movement. Once you achieve maximum neural efficiency, everything you add from there must be
purely muscular or aerobic conditioning.
I WILL BE IRON
That is why I like to use simple exercises, so that you very quickly gain maximum neural efficiency and then can add purely to your athletic power. By keeping the tension, you also keep the
most muscle. Also none of this should be taken as criticism for anyone else’s style of training.
Certainly in the “sport” style of kettlebell lifting there are great people who can do things under
those conditions I can’t and there are some very strong athletes. It’s all in what you want to do.
This is my style. Live and let live. While the conditioning is similar I’m not competing in the
sport. If I were I’d use different technique and sports training.
I want to see as much muscle as possible, as well as, pure endurance and power. Muscle is by far
a secondary consideration. Looks are just not that important. Having powerful, larger, and more
explosive and enduring muscles is never a bad thing and plays into your ultimate strength level as
well. Keeping higher but appropriate tension keeps and gains larger muscles as well as higher hormonal impact and conditioning.
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CHEATING
FOR AND
AGAINST
THE GRIP
W
hen I came to really focus on the swing, I found that while my maximal grip
strength was very good, my grip endurance and my ability to hold on to the
bell for a long period of time was terrible. I wanted to fix this because it
limited my performance. My body could keep going, but my hands quit
too early to get the most out of my training.
This is something that began to improve significantly as I began to work it purposefully, which
is something that most people never really do. They don’t work their grip consciously and certainly not in an endurance format. It’s a huge mistake.
To overcome a lot of this and to quickly push past my grip barriers, I did a couple of things to
make this better. The first thing I did is switch to a lot of one handed swings and switching hands
every ten reps. In doing this I felt like I got the maximum amount out of my available grip power
at the moment. This allowed my grip to build as I went, while simultaneously taxing my muscles
and my cardiovascular system as far as humanly possible.
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I still feel like this is probably one of the, if not the best, pattern to use to even out your grip,
your muscular power and your cardiovascular power; to push everything in an equal measure as
far as humanly possible.
I also found a couple of things that I think are worth mentioning here. I do a couple of unconventional things in how I grip and work the kettlebell handle. Number one, when I first got into it,
I found that I very quickly tore up my hand.
That however simply got better as I paid more attention to my hand as well as my skin literally
toughened. I still occasionally get a blister or rip a callous but very, very seldom anymore because
my hands have toughened to the work pattern. I’m much better about keeping my calluses
trimmed down and paying attention to how the skin on my hand feels - if it feels bad, I will terminate a set.
Next thing I found is that the kettlebells, especially the high rep and high intensity swinging
practice, made me sweat incredibly, terribly bad. To compensate for this and the fact that I
sweated so much that chalk literally became nothing but mud on the bells and was useless after
just a minute or two (and especially because I was doing nonstop sets where stopping and re
chalking is not an issue, or even a possibility), I began to use some athletic tape on the bells.
I WILL BE IRON
I figure that it does help with your grip. It absolutely does give you a more secure grip on the
bell. At the same time, when you’re sweating as much as I am, it is sort of negated there, and it
doesn’t end up as that big a difference in the long run. It also helps from a speed standpoint in
catching the grip up. I was able to work the rest of my body hard while my grip caught up.
I still like to do this because I feel like the grip is an important point of the kettlebell. At the top
end, it’s less emphasis than the pure body work. The more solidly I can grip the bell, the better I
use my whole body on the bell versus having to squeeze the bell so incredibly hard that I engage
the rest of my arm when my torso and hips should be doing most of the work. That can cause
excessive elbow flexion and “scooping,” the bell.
Also, I found that the sweating never goes away. My grip caught up, but the effort didn’t go
down. I don’t have to use tape but still do on super rep non-stop sets per the chalk/sweat issue.
I used four different types of gloves for different purposes.
I also found that at times, specifically to train my grip and to save my hand, I would use gloves.
Gloves actually make the gripping much harder. It is a secret of many of the Russian Girevoy Sport
people to use the gloves literally to make it harder and to train your grip.
The first is a cotton glove with a rubber backing on the inside of the palm I believe that this
glove let me push as far as possible while still protecting the skin on my hand. That particular type
of glove caused the least interference with the grip in the swing, for me.
The second is an all cotton glove that does a good job of protecting your skin, but really
strengthens the grip. The third is a cotton glove with little dots of rubber on it. It’s between the
first two gloves in how difficult it makes gripping the bell, but still protects the hand.
The fourth is a regular leather work glove specifically to protect the skin and work the hand
strength. I did this purposely at times to train my hands and make them harder and to continue
to do significant amounts of volume within the training without damaging my skin.
Another trick I would use here is to train as far as I could within one session barehanded and
then put the gloves on so I could continue training even if my skin was about to be damaged.
A reverse trick of that that I used in some sessions was to start with the gloves, work as hard as
I could until my hands pumped up so much that I couldn’t grip it anymore, but the skin of my
hands was protected from the covering of the glove. Then I would take the gloves off and keep
swinging while the skin was still fresh but my body was already fatigued and my grip was already
fatigued. This let me continue to push further as I went.
I found that I personally prefer to snatch most of the time with the glove only because the snatch
creates so much more friction in the hand that it is quite difficult to keep from damaging the skin
when you go to very high numbers. Especially if you go for more than, for me personally, a ten
minute set, it gets very difficult. This is also because I use a thicker handled bell so it cannot be
“hook” gripped and I don’t intend to compete. Just get the physical ability from the exercise.
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Four different types
of gloves for
different purposes
I have not spent nearly enough time toughening the skin of my hand to the particular groove of
snatches. Therefore, it’s much more susceptible to that wear and tear than it is with the swing. So
for that particular purpose, I like to use gloves most of the time.
Also, it’s very important when you are snatching that you have all the tape residue or tape
removed from the bell because that will create more trouble with your hand. That’s something
you just have to literally live with, either the sweat on the bell or the issue involved there with the
hand with the snatch.
I also think that’s why snatching is much better lent to fast sets most of the time such as
Kenneth Jay’s Viking Warrior Protocol, where you can put the bell down and keep your hands
dry between, versus allowing your skin to be damaged from the water or from the wear and tear.
Queen of Swing, Tracy Reifkind also uses a sock sleeve. She cuts the elastic out of the sock and
places that on the hand to keep the wear and tear down. She believes that gives her the best grip,
least interference with the grip and the most protection of the hand, and simply slides it on her
hand and uses it there.
Other people like to use tape on different parts of the hand. I’ve experimented with them and
they’re all good. Most of the time for me, when it comes to the swing, that’s not even an issue anymore. Your skin will toughen to whatever you ask it to do. I realize some of this may be heretical
by purist standards and frankly I just don’t care. It’ll help you performance and help you reach
your goals. It’s cheating for and against grip, but this will help you along in your training.
INTERVAL AND
NON INTERVAL
TIME AND
REPS
T
here are a lot of ways to track workouts, measure output, and use the kettlebell. In
my opinion, this breaks down to a couple of different ways of keeping track of repetitions and time or keeping track of work/rest periods. It is massively popular
right now in the athletic and physical training world to use interval cardio. I
believe this is important, obviously, if you have seen some of the rest of the book. You understand
that my schedules almost universally allow for one, very hard heavier “interval” training per week
and one, what I call “long third way cardio training.” Within this the kettlebell fits perfectly.
Here are my thoughts on these things. Both ways are incredibly powerful for building your
health and your strength. In fact, both ways apply and fit together. I have found personally, however, that real long term, (especially if you have a “difficult” metabolism), fat burning, and cardiovascular health is incredibly helped by the third way cardio or the extended cardiovascular
explosive whole body movement. The emphasis being the long swing workout, the thousand rep
workout, or the thirty minute or one hour long workout using any of the kettlebell directions that
we’ve given.
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Again, I believe interval training is wonderful, but I believe interval training is misused. One of
the great benefits of the long cardio training is it teaches you not to stop after a predetermined
time period. This, I think, is one of the drawbacks of the interval in that if you are always used to
doing a one minute on or one minute off (or any particular style of work/rest ratio), you get used
to working just that long for as hard as you can and then you stop. You never teach yourself to
simply not stop. Which most people can do if they train for that particular style of strength and
endurance and continue to work.
At first, I didn’t believe it was possible. I believed that anything you did, especially from a muscular effort standpoint, was going to be basically limited by those muscles and you couldn’t go
non-stop. That is, without an expected period of relaxation. Girevoy Sport, (this is in no way a
knock against it), is an example of this. It’s long periods of consistent work, but it’s very moderately paced, and it’s based on relaxation within that method.
What I’m talking about with third way cardio is long periods of hard, high intensity work,
where your body is taught to continue to go and go and go without stopping. Which it can do,
much more than anyone thinks is possible. For instance, maintaining a Girevoy Sport’s style of
timing, say ten minutes, but doing hard swings nonstop for that entire period. Secret Service style
snatching would be an example of this consistent hard, fast paced snatching for a long period of
time, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. This is the same with jerks, push presses as well as with
any other kettlebell movement.
I believe that is the secret to the upper end level of cardio and the benefits play back and forth.
Meaning that the longer you can go at higher sustained heart rate without stopping, the better
your “intervals” will become. The better your “intervals” become, the better you’ll go at third
way cardio.
In doing this, it changed my thought on how to work and how to apply intervals. Most of the
time I personally don’t believe in building a rest period into intervals. I believe in attacking an interval and going as fast as possible. During the beginning of those phases, if you wish to use a planned
work/rest interval to build up your stamina and then move on to pushing yourself into higher,
harder, third way cardio, that’s an excellent way to begin. The point there being, that it’s very hard
to do, and that’s the reason most people don’t want to do sustained high intensity cardio.
In fact, there are some people that have experimented with it, and one of the people who really
have taken it far is John Brookfield, and he has radically affected my thoughts on this. In fact, he
speaks about this “getting past the interval,” which you never really get past. In philosophy what
he’s saying you’ve got to teach yourself simply to not quit. Don’t quit just because 30 seconds is up
or one minute, or whatever time frame you’d set for yourself. You can continue to go if you simply build that type of muscle and cardiovascular power.
I also believe this combination the hard “interval,” (really means short high-intensity cardio),
the heavy lifting, and the third way, extended, explosive full body cardio is one of the secrets to
turning your whole body into what is called “super muscle,” that is type three muscle fibers that
display the oxygen adaptive capacity of slow switch fibers (endurance) and the explosive strength
I WILL BE IRON
Cole Summers, RKC, Cole is another
of the incredible and interesting
people we’ve chosen to feature in
this book. Every time you talk to or
read about him you find out something new you didn’t know before.
For instance: He’s too modest to tell
you these things, but I’ll tell you –
He’s a certified yoga instructor as
well as has a black sash in Gung
Fu. Trains thousands of people at
every level including Olympic and
professional teams in a variety of
sports all over Canada. He was a
regular consultant to Herb Brooks,
The head coach of the 1980
“Miracle” US Hockey Team. That
almost scratches the surface of the
cool stuff Cole does.
capacity of fast switch fibers (strength). It’s very difficult to do, and that’s the reason most people
have never trained it, and most people have never even really considered it as a training style, and
one of the reasons it hasn’t been tremendously studied.
This change in my thoughts on intervals has boiled down to this: If I do intervals with something, I almost universally do them with something that is too heavy to use for an extended cardio
session. What does that mean? In working up over the swing, I’ve built up to using even 106
pound bell for more than five minutes without stopping. Or, an 88 pound bell for 10 minutes
without stopping, or a 53 pound kettlebell in swings for 48 minutes without stopping, similar
movements or times with the jerk or snatch.
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What I’m going to attempt
to do then, if I’m going to do
an “interval,” is the intervals
must be something that you
can only sustain for the pre
planned period of time. So, a
much heavier swing for 30
seconds would fit in interval
capacity, heavier barbell
movements or other movements. There’s nothing wrong
with using mixed patterns
here. This is the perfect way to
gain the advantage of the
interval. There are heavy
swings that you can only do
for 30 seconds without literally having to put the bell
down, and then mix it immediately with thirty seconds
sprawls or whatever movement you might like to do.
What I’m saying here is that
most people don’t take their
interval training to the level
they could because they just
use light weights and stay with
certain rest periods. Whereas
your body will adapt to much
heavier, harder loads, if you
force it to adapt. Most of the
time, I do that by mixing
more than one exercise. I tend
to train it nonstop. A perfect
example of this which has
been mentioned before is my “12:12 Challenge Workout” which is heavy two handed swings for
twenty reps and then 20 reps of sprawls, repeated five times nonstop. This is a sprint based, “go
as fast and hard as you can,” use enough weight to limit you to 20 rep sets, or close to 20 rep sets,
type of lifting and explosive athletic training.
The point here being that when I do those, I don’t generally do, or believe in doing: “I’ll do the
interval for 40 seconds, then rest for 20 seconds. I’ll do the interval for one minute, then rest for
30 seconds.” I’m pushing myself and resting only as is necessary; the point being to drive my heart
rate up and get through the entire thing as fast as humanly possible. That is where the efficiency
I WILL BE IRON
of the shorter “intervals,” and when I speak about “intervals,” that’s really what I mean. There’s
nothing wrong with, and there are some very smart people who believe in interval capacity,
Kenneth Jay being one of them, but you have to look at how that’s done. Viking Warrior conditioning espouses an interval training, but it is an extended interval training, where your heart rate
really doesn’t drop; it stays high for long periods of time. It’s a third way cardio.
Even if I’m using a five exercise mix circuit and repeating that four rounds, I’m not doing 30
seconds on, 30 seconds off. I’m not usually doing “do one round, rest a minute.” I’m blasting
through as hard as possible. Another way to go here, something I’ve experimented with, is using
that type of interval or that type of mixed circuit, where your repetition limits are shorter. For
instance, 20 reps per exercise, in a third way cardio style.
What does that mean? I might attempt to do that five exercise circuit continuously nonstop for
thirty minutes. I might do it with an “interval” or I might not, but most of the time always working harder, heavier, faster being the key, I’m not using a planned rest/pace, I’m simply blasting
through the entire thing, resting only as is absolutely necessary.
I think I do well with this from a cardiovascular standpoint and that you will too. I also don’t
do it on a daily basis. Because of the way I set my schedules up, I can maintain this for long periods of time without burnout. If you were to try to do that every day (without a significant build
up period) without waving the volumes up and down, you would have a very difficult time of this
type of exercise recovering. Unless again you have that significant huge background and buildup
period behind you.
Within this, how have I used and decided to do the kettlebells? For the most part, for me, I use
a 10 to 20 minute time period for heavy kettlebell work. For instance, if I’m doing one armed
push presses with 40 kilo or 48 kilo bells or heavier, or heavy one arm swings or heavy one arm
snatches or whatever, I tend to use a 10 to 20 minute window and work as fast and hard as possible. You can only sustain that effort and pace with that very heavy bell with good form for that
amount of time. Versus using a lighter bell and going for longer periods.
I generally have found that one hour is about the max you want to put into a kettlebell on a regular basis unless you’re simply challenging yourself to do something insane, like a two hour, or
three hour marathon or something along those lines.
One hour dedicated to one exercise is, I believe, a maximum that you can get a benefit out of.
More than that is mental training more than physical training, and it’s simply past the point of
physical return, unless you just weren’t working hard enough during that hour.
So if you can keep it up, unless you’re simply pushing for a challenge, for more than an hour
you’re using too little a resistance, or doing something that’s not a fast enough pace.
The secret service snatch test and “secret service” style movement with the 10 or 15 or 20
minute time limit, works very well here; for your harder cardio, for your “interval” cardio, for
your work with heavier bells. The other thing with that is certain exercises, like the snatch,
depending on people’s shoulders and elbows, may be very hard on you from a joint and muscular
damage perspective for the extended cardio.
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Doing these with a very heavy bell for more than 10 to 20 minutes tends to get dangerous without the right build up or conditioning and super strict technique. Where as you may keep it up
with a significantly lighter bell, (depending on your personal perspective), or may be able to keep
it up in an interval fashion. Trying to use too heavy a bell for the long session with those exercises,
with the exception of the swing, for most people is probably a bad idea until you are very experienced.
REVERSE
ASSISTANCE
EXERCISES FOR
THE SWING
U
nless you’re competing with kettlebells as a sport, almost everyone in the athletic
world uses kettlebells as an assistance movement for some other type of lift or
some other type of physical training. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Kettlebells may be the best athletic assistance movement of anything available.
They’re certainly as good as anything out there with the exception of, for pure maximum level
strength, the barbell and possibly some strongman movements. Very rarely however do people
think of using heavier or other implement movements as assistance for kettlebells.
When I started this journey of becoming like iron, I began to notice different things as I emphasized the kettlebells during training versus emphasizing other tools. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still
and will always be emphasizing some type of maximum strength move. Now, that could be any
type of move. It could be barbell, dumbbell, body weight or strongman movement, as long as the
strain of the movement is heavy.
One thing I began to notice is that certain movements really played well and carried over to my
goals of having high repetition swing performance. That’s something very few people have used
and it’s been exceptionally productive for me.
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Heavier one-arm snatc
hes
with dumbbell, kettleb done
ell or
barbell are a tremend
ous
total-body strength m
ovement
and make an awesome
assistance
exercise to the swing
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So what carries over and what does the best? Well, there’s a lot of things to think about there.
It goes beyond just using those tools to train for the swing. There are obviously many other kettlebell movements that people may attempt or want to master. For instance, the clean, clean and
jerk, presses, push presses or snatches.
To improve your performance with any kettlebell exercise, you would be well served to use
either a heavier kettlebell or some heavier tools (if you’ve gotten past your available kettlebell
weights), that give excellent side benefits to the kettlebell. Simply taking the specific exercises
heavier, harder and farther to complement whatever particular lift or number of repetitions you
are attempting to gain on. Past that there are other exercises and tools that carry over and breed
excellent gains in your kettlebell and swing performance.
Some of the things I found work exceptionally well are partial deadlifts; the things that Pavel
and the Russians call the health lift. Why? If you think about it, the swing is a very similar movement. That movement is all about core and hip extensions, and every time you can add pure
strength to any motion of the body, you build its ability to display and gain in strength endurance,
which is what the swing done at super-high reps is - It is the repetitive explosive movement with a
moderate to heavy weight (depending on how you look at it), done for higher repetitions.
If you can make that same move much heavier, you will therefore have a bigger base to draw
from, build from, and build on in creating your strength endurance. So I found that partial deadlifts were an excellent movement there.
I also found one handed deadlifts to be an excellent movement there. Why? Because it helps
build my grip, it helps build that same core strengthening power that the swing does, except in a
much more low rep concentrated manner.
Now, when I was working this, I also found that very heavy lower reps, one armed swings were
helpful as well as one armed snatches. Why snatches as an assistance movement for swings?
Well, because it’s the logical end variation to the swing. At the same time, it’s a harder move. So
therefore, if I wanted to use the snatch as assistance for the swing, I would do a few snatches
ahead of my swing workout. Even if I was using the same weight kettlebell, it obviously will feel
much easier in your hand when you go back to swings.
I found that any lat work, heavy lat work that you do – (for instance, I have, for most of my
athletic career, done large amounts of one and two armed rowing and lately more Chin ups), is
excellent and necessary assistance movement for super-high rep swinging. Anything you can do in
those areas will improve both your core strength, your grip, and the strength of your lat which
must stay engaged the entire time that you swing.
This carries over also very well for pressing because your lats are going to engage and stay
engaged pretty much any time you’re doing high repetition presses or any other overhead kettlebell move.
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I found also any heavy abdominal movements that I did carried over to the swing. Why?
Because the swing is very core intensive. It’s very abdominal intensive, especially when you do it
with one hand and when you get into the upper weights. If you’re swinging a 106 pound kettlebell or heavier one handed for high repetitions, there’s a lot of pull because of the single hand
movement on the abdominals. As the reps became really high the abdominal activation gets very
intense.
In doing that, you need abdominal strength. So any move that is excellent for you there will
carry over to your swing numbers, especially when you guide the body into expressing its full
capacity and building its full capacity for super human strength endurance.
I also found that any type of significant grip work was a great help in building the swing. Now,
the swing actually was a great grip builder for me. A great forearm builder along with, obviously,
it’s total body benefits because of the massive volume of load that I did. The grip was really one
of the weak issues for me in evening out the entire strength of the body.
For instance, my hips could go longer than my grip could, but that evened out relatively quickly
after I started really pumping the volume. Heavy grippers and heavy farmer’s walks also work
well in that particular area. Working these both heavy and in endurance format is important.
One Hand Deadlift – Here’s is a
shot of the D-Handle one hand
deadlift done as a heavier assistance exercise for the swing. This
is 14 year old Noah lifting 300lbs.
Part of the reason he’s able to do
this is the swing training he does
and playing back and forth is part
of the reason he can swing for
1,000 reps.
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Also, I found that to carry over to other types of kettlebell lifting, heavier versions of those particular lifts might be employed to work as strength based builders; power and form builders for
higher repetition performances.
For instance, very heavy dumbbell snatches build a lot of power for higher repetition kettlebell
snatches and that also carries over to swings. Very heavy one armed on presses build lots of basic
power for one armed, higher repetition push presses which are one of my favorite kettlebell
moves.
A heavier version, either using a heavier kettlebell than you would normally do for high repetition or a dumbbell if necessary if you’re out of the kettlebell range, or you’re out of your range of
available kettlebells works great there.
All of these movements are shown with pictures and what they do as an assistance movement.
The great benefit here is that these tend to play back and forth on each other. For instance, the
better you get at the higher repetition swing, the more power you build for snatches, squats,
presses in a heavy medium. So these tend to play back and forth with each other.
Another assistance exercise that I really use, I think, to great benefit is the two-handed heavy
swing, goes along with the style of heavy and light cycling that I use. This increased my power and
increased the ability of my body to sustain that high level explosion. That carries over to a higher
repetition one handed swing and then the endurance of the high repetition one handed swings
would carry over to the very heavy two handed swings.
All these gained double benefits. The power improves the endurance and explosive endurance
equally improves the power. Also radically improves your ability to tolerate that power.
For instance, when you can do 500 reps of moderate weight kettlebell swings without stopping
(or a thousand reps), 20 reps sets of very heavy swings or 10 rep sets of very heavy partials just
don’t feel very physically taxing even if you’re working very, very hard.
It goes again with the theme of this book which is “Never Get Tired Again.” That is the benefit
of these. Be sure you look to use heavier movements as both a pure power builder and as assistance
to your kettlebell work. You’ll be very glad that you did and you’ll get massive benefits and PRs.
HOW TO
DO THIS
TRAINING
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HOW
TO
DO THIS
TRAINING
1 – Learn to Swing
This training includes heavy lifting, short intense cardio and third-way cardio based around long
sets of the swing. However you can mix it any way you wish and simply mix the third-way cardio
swing if that what you want to do. But you can’t do anything if you don’t know how to do the
swing and do it well.
2 – Break In
Long sets of the swing is deep water training. You don’t walk in and do it the first day. Take
some time, build your base. Get used to the movement and its physical strain, then start adding
significant amounts of time and intensity to what you do.
3 – Decide Goals
I like the idea of having a base of doing 500 total swings in a workout. After that you can really
start working toward the big goals. 1,000 reps and then 1,000 reps unbroken, then 1,000 reps
with heavier weight. Then… who knows?
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4 – Decide Weekly Schedule
We’ve given you multiple examples of how to put this training together on a weekly format and
set it up so it can fit many different personalities and time constraints. Decide what you want to
use and have a plan in place before you start.
5 – Start Training
I know you’re already training, but commit to achieving this! Commitment is the biggest part
of this training. Decide that one way or another you’ll stay the course and won’t stop until you’ve
achieved that goal. Don’t let anything get in the way. If you have to stop come back to it. If you
have to adjust – keep going. That’s when you see the real life and physical benefits from this
training.
PRE-CYCLE:
BASEBUILDING
B
efore you begin kettlebell cycling you should spend a minimum of a couple of
weeks familiarizing yourself with the kettlebell and working in the lower rep
ranges, 100 to 200 reps of swings, etc.
Then spend the next three to four weeks minimum getting accustomed at a basic weight for
yourself at the 500 rep mark. Within this you may begin to see some gains and some benefits
there, and if you’re past this point then you can start swing cycling any where you want.
I believe 500 reps is a nice place to start, but you have to judge for your own particular body
build and for your tolerance of exercise and your current condition.
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Melody Schoenfeld, CSCS, RKC, CMT. Shown
here swinging the 106lb Beast kettlebell at a
bodyweight of 101lbs. Melody has also
done1,060 continuous swings with a 16kg
bell and 500 swings with double 20kg
bells.(That’s 500 reps with nearly 90% of her
bodyweight – That’s pretty awesome!) She’s
deadlifting nearly double bodyweight. She’s
also a very successful trainer studying for a
doctorate in Chinese medicine as well as a
vegan chef and a vocalist.
INTERVAL
BUILD-UP
T
he point of this training style is to do long sets unbroken (without stopping), or
putting the bell down. However most people simply won’t be able to start there.
It’s entirely appropriate to use a set of intervals to build up to the longer sets.
There are many ways to do that and any way you choose can be great. Don’t over
pressure yourself to be able to do 1,000 reps without stopping too quickly. The ability, strength
and conditioning will come to you – just follow the training. Even then don’t worry if it’s not
always an unbroken set. In the initial build up you simply county the total number of repetitions
and don’t worry about the fact that you may have to stop and put the bell down. Some excellent
ways to begin are 30 seconds on and then 30 seconds off, then progress by taking progressively
less time off by going 30 on and 25 off, etc.
Another way is to add time to the work interval but keep the rest interval the same, i.e. 40 on –
30 off – and then begin to mix the two. Always going to longer sets of work and shorter rests. It’s
also great to simply count the reps and then time the rest periods. i.e. Do 40 reps, rest for 30 seconds, repeat. To progress here you can simply move to 50 reps, then 60, etc and keep the rest the
same. Build up to 100, then start cutting the rest period. Try to keep track of the total time it
takes you to perform a given number of repetitions and then do it faster. As you do that you’ll
increase your ability to do longer sets without stopping.
SWING
CYCLES
How to alternate
bells to explode
toward your goals
C
ycling your swing weights up and down, or your kettlebell weights up and down,
regardless of any of the different kettlebell exercises that you might use is one of
the most important aspects of the “I Will Be Iron,” style of kettlebell training. It is
also one of the most incredibly beneficial styles of kettlebell training out there.
Why? Because the flow back and forth between heavier and lighter weights, creates an incredible
circle of progress made in many directions.
When you swing heavier and lighter, switching back and forth, an almost magical appearance
of physical ability as well as personal records in repetitions and times appears. It was incredibly
effective, and the most effective change that I made in my swing training, to cycle up and down
among the weights and force the PRs to happen that way. Here are multiple swing cycles to be
used.
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Cole Summers
at age 64 in
September of 2011
I WILL BE IRON
CYCLE 1
STRAIGHT BUILD-UP
500-1000 REPS!
CYCLE
In this particular cycle, you are going to, after a break in period with kettlebells, or a normalizing period where you can consistently achieve a 500 rep workout with swings, begin to add reps
per week to the cycle. So this might look like 500 reps week one, 600 week two, 700 week three,
and so on.
Generally for most of the kettlebell cycles I recommend you go about six weeks depending on
the person, and then you start a different cycle or re cycle back to your original bell and go up.
Within this, a second option to the straight build up cycle, (and this is all using the same weight
kettlebell), is to go three weeks up one week down and back again.
You might go 500 the first week, 600 the second week, 700 the third week, and then on the
fourth week, you cycle back down to 300 to 500 reps, a break or easy week, and then on the fifth
week, you go back up to a new gain in the cycle. Say 800 reps, 900 reps the next week, and then
possibly even 1000 the next week, and then cycle back down to 300 to 500 reps and go back
down, and then go back up. You will be attempting to consistently PR.
If you cycle through the straight cycle twice, you need to keep track of your repetitions and time
per bell. For instance, if you make 500 in 20 minutes the first time, 600 in 25, 700 in 30 minutes
the first time through the cycle, when you cycle back through each time, what you want to do is
beat your time for each one. So, you’ll be looking to do 500 in less than 20 minutes. 600 in a
faster time, 700 in a faster time, then repeat and beat them again if you choose. This is an excellent way to build up through the first cycle of kettlebell swing training.
I also always look to do more reps unbroken (without putting the bell down) in every workout.
After that first “set” you then have a choice to push each subsequent set (working toward your
rep goad for the day) as far as possible or simply choose a rep number to do on each set until you
hit your target (i.e. 50 or 30). I also rest as little as possible along the way to get the fastest total
time and productive workout.
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CYCLE 2
A STRAIGHT
WEIGHT CYCLE
The cycles are designed to begin alternating the weight from week to week or from period to
period. The first way to do this is to stay with a fixed repetition range. That might be 500 reps as
your fixed repetition number for example.
On week one you would use a 53 (or 24kg) pound bell, go 500 reps as fast as you can. Week
two would be a 70 pound or 32 kilo bell, week three would be 88 pound (or 40kg), and week
four would be the 106 (or 48kg) pound bell. And then on the fifth week you would cycle back
down to the 53 pound bell. Staying at 500 reps no matter the time every week.
The idea being here that as you repeat the cycle you beat your time consistently, every time you
re cycle. So again, with the 24 kilo bell, or the 53 pound bell, you might get 20 minutes for 500
reps the first time. When you cycle back through, it might be back through it might be down to 17
minutes or 15 minutes, or whatever the gain you possibly make.
Version 2
Spend two to three weeks at each individual weight. So week one through three might be the 53
pound bell. Week four through six might be at the 70 pound bell, and so on. Within this, you may
PR each time. For instance you may get 20 minutes for your 500 reps the first week, with a 53,
and then 18 for the next week and then 17 the next week, etc.
Then you move up, for a couple of weeks you PR, and you move up to the next bell; and once
you cycle through your heaviest bells you go back start over again at the 24kg/53lb bell. When
you do that (start over again), that’s an optimal time to move up to a higher repetitions and then
build the entire cycle up again.
Maybe 750 reps with a 24kg/53lb starting another two or three weeks there. Back up to the
32kg/70lb, the same 750 reps at 32kg/70lb, etc. You also have that option at any time with any of
the cycles is to do a second week or an extra week with a particular weight. I like this especially if
I’m close to a PR.
For instance, one of my goals was to do 500 unbroken reps. If on the week before, I hit 450
unbroken reps even if my cycle called for me to move up in weight, but I knew I would be close to
making that 500 reps, I might do an extra week there. Try to hit that goal PR of 500 straight
unbroken reps and then move up. Don’t do it for more than one or two weeks in a row because
it can lead to burnout. You should just move on to a bigger weight and continue the cycle.
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Version 3
Use a fixed time period and simply do as many reps as you can. So for instance you might use
thirty minutes as your fixed time period. And within that you might get 800 reps with a
24kg/53lb, and then 650 with a 32kg/70lb and then 400 with the 40kg/88lb bell, etc.
Within this particular cycle, you again have the option of doing multiple weeks of the same
weight and moving up. Or keep your time fixed and set your personal record by doing more repetitions in the given time period. Within this you may also keep track of your other repetition
goals. I like to set to 500 repetition goals and 1000 repetition goals. So you’re always keeping
track of how fast you can do 500 and how fast you can do 1000.
Within that you might PR and get a faster time for 500 reps as well as getting a better overall
goal for your thirty minute time period with the possibility of multiple personal records in the
same session as well as the same cycle.
CYCLE 3
THE STAGGERED
CYCLE
This was a very effective cycle for me and this was a very interesting cycle. This also can be
done with multiple variations. The basic staggered cycle works like this: You use a light weight in
week one with a high repetition basis. So, for instance, you might use the 24kg/53lb bells for
1000 reps week one and then immediately jump to double the weight the 48kg/106lb bells in the
next week and do 500 repetitions - Alternating heavy and light.
You can then cycle back and forth between heavy and light bells. PR ing for repetitions or time
each week or attempting to do that. Run that for a six week cycle and then change to whatever
next direction you decide on.
Version 2
This staggered cycle still keeps the lighter weight on week one and a heavy weight on week
two, but increases the weight on each light week. For instance, week one might be with the 24
kilo or 53 pound bell. Week two would be with the 106. Then in week three, you would jump up
to the 70 pound bell. Week four, you would go back to the 106. Week five, you would jump up
to the 88 pound bells. Week six, you would go back to the same consistent heavy bell, the 106
pound bell. And then on the next week, you would start the cycle over again going back to the 53
- Keeping track of your PRs each time.
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Within the basic version of this staggered cycle, you can do the same reps for every workout. So
we do 500 reps for every week, that’s just an example. Or, 1000 reps or whatever your repetition
goal with that is. You’re cycling back and forth between your heaviest bells and then progressively
climbing every other week with a lighter bell and always trying to go faster or more unbroken reps.
Version 3
Stay with much higher reps on your light weeks and then go to a fixed repetition set on your
heavy weeks. So, for instance, use a truly heavy bell, you can go to 500 reps and stay there for
your entire cycle with your heavy bell especially effective if you go to the two hand swing. With
this version you may simply use time (i.e. 30 minutes), and do as much work as you can with
whatever resistance you use in that time.
Then go to a time limit or a higher repetition PR for your lighter weight. You might stay at 500
for all of your heavy weeks and then go 1000 for all your other weeks, again keeping track of
your unbroken repetitions and your time. Again you’ve run through, let’s say, eight weeks of the
cycle, starting back over again with a new buildup a new peak to move from.
Version 4
Added into this cycle is to use a heavy and light bell in the same week, or in the same workout.
You begin your workout by doing as many repetitions or whatever your goal is with a heavy bell.
Either one or two handed, and then immediately jump to a lighter bell. Either finish out your total
goal repetitions or go to your time limit with that lighter bell.
That’s an excellent way to cycle and an excellent way to extend your reps and extend your
endurance when you’re not 100 percent ready to stay with a heavy bell for the extended time
period. That’s also an excellent way to work on speed as well as strength in the same workout.
Version 5
Do these workouts in the same week. So, for instance, (instead of doing them every other week
as I personally have preferred). You might do heavy in the earlier part of the week with your fixed
repetition and then cycle your lighter bells or your higher repetition into the second part of the
week. Again either going for a fixed time or fixed repetitions. If you choose this it’s best to keep
the first session heavy and lower volume, for many it may be best to keep to 200 reps or less.
I WILL BE IRON
CYCLE 4
PRE-EXHAUSTION
CYCLE
This cycle has four distinct ways that you can train it. What I mean by pre-exhaustion is we're
going to use some other exercise or series of exercises to “pre exhaust” your muscles and cardiovascular systems before you do your swing. Then immediately do your swings to make them more
difficult. At the end of the cycle you’ll create personal records and better performances in the
swing when you go back to training it fresh.
Version 1
The pre exhaustion versions would follow exactly the same style of build up as the rest of the
cycles. Start with ten minutes of say snatches, which would be a specific pre exhaustion for this
cycle. Then go to your swing workout. Doing exactly the same straight cycles or staggered cycles
that you do in the previously discussed cycles, except you always precede the swings with your
snatches.
Version 2
Simply rotate your exercise or use a different non swing, non kettlebell exercise as you're pre
exhaustion exercises. For instance - I might do ten minutes nonstop on a heavy bag, or ten minutes of sprawls, something that involves muscles and cardiovascular capacity but doesn't challenge the grip or the specific pulling motion that the swing does. Again you would follow the
other cycles, be it the straight build up cycle or staggered cycle or reps per time, etc.
Version 3
A rotating pre exhaustion in which you would do one week of the pre exhaustion style, doing
whichever style you prefer and then do your swing. Then the next week go to a regular swing session and then back to the pre exhaustion the following week.
In that one, I would recommend that you start out using that cycle by doing the pre exhaustion
and then whatever preferred goal or repetition time with the swings. Then the next week, stay
with that same bell. For instance, use the 24 kilo bell on the first week and then the second week
of that cycle, use the 24 kilo on your regular non pre exhaustive swing workout. Then on the third
week, proceed back to your pre exhaustion, and then move up a bell, etc. Then repeat that for the
length of the cycle, switching back and forth between the pre exhaustive style and the regular
style.
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Version 4
Continuing with the pre exhaustion style of swing performance, you have another option to use
in your cycle. These cycles run exactly the same as the straight cycle, the staggered cycle, etc., for
repetitions or times. With this cycle style, you will use swings as pre exhaustion for other swings.
What does that mean? If I'm working on my heavy two handed swing, I might do a light, high rep
swing before that as a pre exhaustion. So I might do 500 reps with a 24 or 32 kilogram bell, and
then go immediately go into 500 reps with a very heavy, 150 pound or better, two handed bell. I
might also, as an extension of that, do the opposite. Do 100 to 200 reps with a heavy two handed
bell, and then go immediately to my one handed high repetition for 500 to 1000 reps style of
swing.
CYCLE 5
SWINGS,
OTHER AND THEN SWING
I have found that the swing can push your grip and other areas of the body to their limit, but
maybe you’re not ready to quit from an energetic or cardiovascular standpoint. What you may do
is split your 1000 rep swing workout. For instance, you might do 500 swings, or swing until you
literally run out of grip or whatever physical ability so fatigued you cannot keep going then
switch to an exercise that stresses different areas, but still uses that explosive cardiovascular training that the kettlebell is for. Then go back and finish your swings, or go back and attempt to
repeat your swing workout the second time.
I successfully used this to keep my cardiovascular and physical conditioning going as my grip
grew. I would swing until my grip fatigued, and then begin push pressing the kettlebell (this would
work with any exercise). As I push pressed, I would push press for another 10 to 20 minutes and
my grip would recover somewhat. I would then go back to swinging and finish the rest of my repetitions, or go on and drive myself harder, faster, longer, into a deeper fatigue and thus expand my
physical abilities.
CYCLE 6
THREE EXERCISE
CYCLE
In this style you use three different exercises which is very ambitious. You need to be in very
good shape to do this. I used it for different times, and it also plays into different types of pre
exhaustion. In this, you might do 10 minutes of very heavy two handed swings, and then five minutes of speed based or snatching, and then go to your high repetition kettlebell cycle. You might
reverse the order: high repetition swings first, then go to snatches, then go to heavy two handed
I WILL BE IRON
swings, for whichever one you wish to emphasize. Again, using the same basic cycling techniques
of either same repetitions or waving the weight up and down depending on where you are in the
cycle and what you are attempting to do. This is an advanced set up for gearing up for extensive
fat loss and performance.
CYCLE 7
THE SWING AS
PRE-EXHAUSTION
TO ANOTHER EXERCISE
For this, I usually pick something other than a kettlebell exercise, because I was going to drive
the swing incredibly hard during this cycle. I wished to use the cardio of another exercise to push
myself harder, but to do it after I’d taken the swing as far as I could. With this, I would do my repetition or time limit of swings and use it as a pre exhaustion to immediately go to another exercise, for instance heavy bag punching or sprawls, or anything else that you choose to do.
In this you can continue pushing your cardiovascular and muscular effort harder and doing it
after the swing to both improve your swing as you cycle back to it in the next workout or the next
cycle and improve the other exercise in your cardiovascular and muscular capacity.
CYCLE 8
HEAVY-SWING-HEAVY
In this style I prefer to use different heavy exercises, often heavy exercises that directly carry
over to the swing as is discussed in the swing assistance exercise portion of the book, but sometimes other exercises as well because any realistic heavy exercise that you do potentiates and generates tension in the whole body. Therefore, any heavy exercise you do is both a pre exhaustion
to the swing, and the swing is pre exhaustion to any heavy exercise you do. For this, you might do
partial dead lifts for max or even for a heavy five or ten minutes of repetitions, and then immediately go to your volume swing workout your one handed 500 to 1000 repetition swing and then
go right back to your heavy dead lifting, either for max, or for repetitions for a set time period.
Within that, you could do other exercises as well. For instance, partial squats and one or two
arm presses work well because they still fatigue the body and you train a type of strength in pre
fatiguing the body that makes your swing stronger, and then totally fatiguing the body with the
swings. When you can get close to or very close to your heavy weights on the second part of the
workout or the cycle, then you know you have incredibly increased your strength as well as your
endurance capacity.
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CYCLE 9
SPECIFIC
MUSCLE PRE-EXHAUSTION
The swing, because of its incredibly general nature, allows you to push yourself as far as you
can. It specifically emphasizes the grip, the abdominals, the legs and back, and an excellent way
to fatigue any of those muscles and therefore create better strength and capacity is to use either
them as a pre exhaustion or the swing as a pre exhaustion for them. For instance, you might do
flags or hanging leg raises or the power wheel for five or ten minutes and then immediately go to
your swings. With your abs being pre fatigued, you’ll have to work twice as hard on your swing,
or you might do the opposite and swing as hard and far as you can, which will pre fatigue your
abdominals, and then immediately go to your strength or repetition abdominal exercise. The same
could be said for the back or the grip or any other specific muscle movement.
CYCLE 10
EASIER EXERCISE
TO KEEP MOVING
In building up the swing, one of the things I wanted to do is push it as far as humanly possible.
I found that often (especially in the beginning) I could swing hard enough that I could not keep up
any other intense exercise for any significant period of time, but I could still at least move around,
to keep the work going. To keep your exercise moving, you might want to do swings as far as you
possibly can, and then a light exercise, that will allow you to somewhat catch your breath and rest
before you go back to the swing. Especially if you’re using heavier swings, this is a good way to do
it because your recovery may be longer after you’ve swung to fatigue or you’ve swung to wherever
you need to stop.
So with this I like to use things like light dumbbell punches with five pound dumbbells, or simply shadowboxing, etc., where I can continue to keep the body moving while I catch my breath
and go back. This is the same principle as the “Man Maker” workout, simply applied differently
and with a longer time period in mind. (i.e. swing/jog/swing)
I WILL BE IRON
CYCLE 11
HARDER THAN
YOU WANT IT TO BE
This is the opposite of the 10th cycle and is made to really drive your heart rate up. Both styles
pre exhaustion to swing and the swing as pre exhaustion are used. So for instance, you might do
your high repetition swing workout and drive yourself to the point where you must stop the
swings and then as soon and as humanly possible pick another exercise, for instance, a stone
carry that will drive your heart rate to absolute max.
Then immediately afterwards go back to your one handed swings and push further as you go.
This is the hardest possible way of training any muscle of your system. Really you must be in
shape or only pull it out at certain times because of the significant amount of fatigue that it produces.
Also, if you get to a place where you are very used to the swing and you have truly conditioned
yourself to the place where it’s only your mind stopping you and your body can continue swinging, this is a useful technique to drive your heart rate higher and then, therefore, force your mind
and your body to work harder than normal when you go back to your normal style and pace of
swinging.
CYCLE 12
HEAVY AND
LIGHT THE NEXT DAY
Normally, I prefer to use significant rest periods between swing workouts, but I have used this
successfully. Both with swings as well as jerks and it works well for me and can work good for
you as long as you manage the fatigue. The point here is to take two days in a row and one of the
side benefits is teaching yourself that no matter how blasted you are from a workout you can
recover.
The first day would be a heavy workout, say heavy two handed swings, going as far as you can
with them and then immediately go back the next day to lighter higher repetition one handed
swings. You might go 100 to 500 reps the first day and then 500 to a 1000 reps the second day
depending on how you are conditioned and where you are in each individual cycle. This allows
you to harden the body and also allows you to build a kind of “super compensation” in that you
have taken the fatigue further two days in a row and then when you cycle back to it, for instance,
a week later, you get an extra gain when the body recovers.
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CYCLE 13
USING THE
SWING TO
CONTINUE ANOTHER KETTLEBELL EXERCISE
This something that I started doing recently that I picked up from my buddy Logan
Christopher. He likes to do it with snatches. I have begun doing it with push presses. Here is the
point and here’s what you do.
Once you’ve established a massive base of swing power and you’ve built up to handling the
volume and have the incredible conditioning and strength that goes with it, you may wish to
work on other exercises.
I, for instance, have been working on 1000 rep push presses, and also doing a very high repetition snatches, but snatches especially can be very difficult to maintain that high pace for long
periods of time without technical or pace breakdown. So once you have gained that ability, you
may wish to push press as far and hard as you can, say five to seven minutes, and then immediately drop back into swings until you recover enough to go back to the exercise you wish to do.
Now, Logan likes to do this in his training for kettlebell snatch mastery in the Secret Service
Snatch Test. So, for instance, you snatch at a high pace or as far as you can for say seven minutes
and then are too fatigued to keep snatching, you may be able to force yourself to keep swinging
for the next three minutes, because the technique is simpler and it may not be quite as difficult as
snatches when using the same bell, but it still forcing the body go further and harder.
The same can be done with presses or any other exercise. If you are fatiguing a specific part of
the body, for instance, if you are doing presses, and your cardiovascular capacity can continue
but your arms, shoulders or legs are giving out, you can switch to the swing, focus on a different
movement for a few minutes but keep your cardiovascular conditioning rolling. While the exercises are both taxing the body differently but recovering the specific body part, you can jump
back to that particular movement and in doing so you can keep that workout moving without
stopping and drive to a higher level.
HOW TO
PUT THIS
ALL
TOGETHER
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WEEKLY
TRAINING
EXAMPLES
EXAMPLE 1
The days are listed in this particular example in a 1, 2, 3 basis (with a day between, ex: Monday,
Wednesday, Friday), but you could organize them in whatever capacity works for you.
The idea being that this is very close to, if not optimal frequency for any of these individual
types of strength. High level maximum strength, intermediate level fast paced interval style
strength and longer third way cardio kettlebell conditioning based usually about the swing to go
for extremely high repetitions and long periods of time.
These give for the most people, most of the time, optimal results in that you almost never burn
out because your frequency is under control and you get the optimal amount of strength, gain and
benefit from all of these in working all of them together.
Day 1
Squat or deadlift. Press, row or Chin. Five sets of one to five reps. Warm up with a lighter
weight. Add weight progressively to one or two top sets. This is your strength work for the week
as well as allowing you to access both fat burning and athletic ability of all around high level, high
tension muscular work.
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Day 2
Heavy “intervals.” This is a shorter but harder session based usually around mixing some sort
of heavier swing with another exercise that promotes both muscular endurance and strength as
well as cardiovascular capacity.
Now this could be anything. One of the best workouts that I’ve ever done with this is the
“12:12 Challenge” which is 20 repetitions of two handed heavy kettlebell swings and 20 sprawls
repeated five times nonstop. The original version of this workout took me 12 minutes and 12 seconds to complete using a 150 pound T handled or two handed kettlebell
Over the course of a period of a year and a half, I worked that down to just less than six minutes with exactly that, same weight and cut literally the time in half. This is a hard, heavy, fast
paced cardio and muscular workout using an “interval” basis.
Day 3
This is your high rep swing day. This is the day where you take your moderate to light weight
or whatever it is you’re working on the kettlebell in your swings and go as hard and far as you
can. This is your 1,000 rep day or whatever might work for you.
An example of a
"light" partial
squat as shown
here with 900lbs
Partial and/or full squats make an excellent addition to this program.
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EXAMPLE 2
The point of this particular example is again the three day workouts but in this your maximum
strength is split up to a very small amount done each day with a shorter or different kind of conditioning to follow. This is an excellent way to go, and again puts most people in exactly the right
kind of frequency to get the massive gain out of both the interval cardio, the heavier kettlebell
work and then the third way high rep kettlebell training.
Day 1
Squat or leg based exercise maximum strength, five sets, one to five repetitions. Finish with ten
minutes of heavy kettlebell lifting. Now this could be done any way that you wish to do it. For the
purposes of this we’ll say that you’re doing 10 minutes of heavy kettlebell jerks or snatches. This
would give you a 10 minute test. Something along the lines of the Secret Service Snatch Test or 10
minute jerk set or whatever, or you could even use ten minutes of very heavy kettlebell swings.
Day 2
Maximum presses of some sort, five sets, one to five reps. Then finish with your heavy interval
cardio training. Now if I were going to use the kettlebell on Day one and the kettlebell which will
come up again on day three I would do something different here. An optimal one might be heavy
intervals of sprawls and heavy bag punches. The idea being to get a good 15 20 minute hard
sprinting based workout immediately after your heavy pressing.
Day 3
Maximum pull day, deadlift or whatever pull you chose to use. Again five sets, one to five reps.
Then this would follow with your high repetition kettlebell third way cardio swing cycling workout.
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Overhead one-arm
press with
150lb dumbbell
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EXAMPLE 3
This particular example is meant to give you some variety and a different way of looking at things
depending on what you might wish to accomplish or your particular goals. It’s also a good way to
mix in three heavy kettlebell sessions a week, two shorter ones and one truly high rep session.
Your heavier poundages and heavier lifting is divided into two days. Your third day is dedicated
solely to the high repetition kettlebell. You might also pick ten minutes of snatches the first day
and ten minutes of jerks the second day.
Also in this, an excellent way to keep the body fresh or to change things up is to use different
pacing techniques for the three different kettlebell days.
For instance, on the first day you might do heavy snatches with a moderated pace. Say five reps
per hand per minute. The second day might be truly heavy jerks or presses mixing to the heaviest
ones you can do for five reps or less. Or it might be a fight style day where you sprint as hard as
you can for ten minutes with a jerk/press movement .
Then your day three would be where ever you are on your kettlebell swing cycle, meaning if
you’re working for static repetitions (staying with the same reps and moving your kettlebell up
every week), moving up in weight every week or moving up in repetitions every week, whatever
cycle you might happen to be on at that particular time.
Day 1
Squat and press, five sets, one to five reps, working up as you go for one to maybe two top sets.
Then ten minutes of heavy kettlebell.
Day 2
Pull and Chin up or Row. By pull I mean deadlift or some type of lower back hip dominant pull.
Go for five sets of one to five reps, working to a top set for the day. Then ten more minutes of kettlebell.
Day 3
High repetition kettlebell day.
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Pro MMA Fighter Josh “Gazellasaurus Rex” Bacallao – Partial
deadlifts with 500lbs in the middle of a circuit at bodyweight of
160lbs.
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EXAMPLE 4
The point of this particular example and this particular three day work routine is to add conditioning to absolutely everything you do. It’s more geared towards total fat loss, as well as complete
conditioning all the way around.
Eventually most of my workouts begin to take some shape like this, in that even though I continue
to lift heavy and did not sacrifice poundage, I almost always mix it with a lighter exercise and begin
to do every workout with a fast pace and very little to no rest and constantly training both my cardiovascular system, as well as strength system.
You may sacrifice a little bit of poundage as you begin this but you will then adapt and be surprised that very quickly you will be back to very close to your regular poundages, and then soon
after that, above and beyond your normal poundages.
Example four takes an entirely different slant. Placing conditioning and intervals into two days in
which the entire workout is based on a fast paced interval mix of heavy and light work. Then the
third day is devoted to your high rep swing cycle.
Day 1
Start with ten to twenty minutes of a squat based exercise and one arm push press intervals.
This might be something along the neighborhood of five to ten sets of one to two reps of squats,
adding weight as you go, and jerking a kettlebell for 20 reps per round, going as fast as you can
with as little rest as possible between the rounds.
The second exercise for the day would be a pull. Again, five to ten sets with one to two repetitions. Add weight as you go to a max for the day and 20 repetition swing intervals, between 20 to
40 swings per interval, depending on what you particularly want to emphasize, or whether or not
you are working heavy swings.
Day 2
A slightly different set of intervals but it would be a press for, again, one to two repetitions for
five to ten sets. A chin up, which would be your choice to do body weight alone and go to higher
repetition or weighted chin and, again, stay with the, five to ten sets, and one to five reps depending on how you wish to do your chin ups, and alternating each exercise with snatch intervals.
The snatches could be ten reps per hand or five reps per hand. The main idea being to sprint the
entire workout, fast paced, nonstop as possible.
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You may use an organized interval. For instance, 40 seconds on or go through the entire interval and rest 30 seconds. Start the interval again. That would be an intelligent way to do that and
an excellent way to program that.
Day 3
Again, would be your high repetition, nonstop day of swings and would be within whatever place
in the cycle you happened to be.
Pictured here are
goodmornings
starting from a
bottom position in
a power rack done
at famous Muscle
Beach in Santa
Monica, CA.
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re
Heavy Goodmornings a
ion
t
a
in
b
m
o
c
t
n
e
ll
e
c
x
e
n
a
nt
squat/deadlift moveme
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EXAMPLE 5
This particular setup expands the number of days per weeks you train and gives you a little more
freedom, more variety and options depending on how you wish to emphasize any particular setup.
For instance, this particular routine gives you two heavy days, one heavy interval day, and one
long cardio day with options of shorter cardio bursts throughout the week depending on how you
might wish to train, and depending on how this fits into your schedule.
Day 1
Squats and presses, again for the five sets of one to five reps and then an option for five to ten
minutes of kettlebell work heavy or light depending on what you wish to do.
Day 2
Heavy intervals. Again this would be the day to really hammer the hardest kettlebell, as well as
other exercises together. An excellent one here might be heavy two handed swings mixed with
sledgehammer swinging and sprints.
Day 3
Chin up or row and pull day, again for the five sets of one to five reps with another option here
to take another five to ten minutes of a different kettlebell exercise, depending on which one you
might wish to do. Kettlebell Turkish getups would be an excellent choice here, or any of the press,
snatch, swing or juggling.
Day 4
This is your day dedicated to your kettlebell cycle of high repetition work, whatever part of the
cycle you might be in for kettlebell swings.
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One-arm Rows
with 200 lbs
An exercise you
can be very
strong in
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EXAMPLE 6
Example six moves to a two day a week schedule. This is often an optimal schedule for athletes
and people in other types of training. Often, with the MMA people I train, I recommend two days a
week simply because of the incredible amount and volume of other training that they undergo.
If you happen to be competitive in some other sport, especially an endurance based sport, or a
cyclist, or a martial arts, this may be a good way for you to go as it allows two intense workouts and
gets very similar benefits with nowhere near the requisite time commitment. Your skill training and
recovery can take a high priority.
There are several ways to set up a productive two day a week schedule.
Day 1
All your heavy work: squat, press, pull, row or chin up all for your moderate repetitions, one to
five reps at five sets, etc.
Day 2
Your high rep ballistic kettlebell day mixing several styles of kettlebell together, but specifically
getting in at least one day of the high repetition swing.
Another example –
Day 1
Mix two heavy exercises along with a heavy interval on day one.
Day 2
Two more heavy exercises, and then your high repetition kettlebell day with your swing in your
cycle for the high repetition work.
Still another example of the two day a week workout style would be two dedicated long days,
which you sometimes can get away with depending on your other sport or what other commitments because of the amount of recovery time between. An example of this:
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Day 1
Two heavy exercises, then a 10 minute or so heavy interval based routine, which could be something along the lines of a 10 mintue heavy kettlebell set and then a high repetition kettlebell movement; something in along the 1,000 rep line. (So I might set up something like squat and press on
day one, followed by heavy kettlebell jerks for 10 minutes then your high rep swings).
Day 2
Basically a repeat of day one with different exercises. Deadlifts and Chins followed by 10 minutes of heavy kettlebell snatching, or 10 minutes of two handed swings and sprawls and then
another set of high repetition long third way cardio style endurance kettlebell work which could,
again, be swings or it might be any of the pre exhaustion style of kettlebell cycles that we’ve listed.
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Kettlebell
Push-Press
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103
Another incredible
effective movement
for both strength
and conditioning
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EXAMPLE 7
Takes a different turn and a different twist on strength and conditioning. This is a style of
“pre”exhaustion, but not pre exhaustion in the classic bodybuilder style, which would simply be to
drive a muscle further into exhaustion or further into it’s possible strength by using a pre exercise
that specifically fatigues one muscle, an isolation type exercise, and then a compound exercise to
push it further.
Examples: Pec flies or dumbbell flies, and then immediately do a bench press because you use the
stronger muscles (triceps, deltoids, etc), to keep the exhausted muscles of the chest going. This takes
that to a whole different level of physical training by literally using pre exhaustion of the whole
body.
Day 1
10 to 20 minutes of kettlebells, your choice of what particular style, and then onto one or two
heavy lifts.
Day 2
Something similar to Day 1: 10 to 20 minutes of kettlebell intervals, and then onto one or two
heavy lifts, to continue that style.
You could use a general fatiguing exercise or a set up of kettlebell exercises to fatigue the entire
body and then do whole body lifts.
For instance, you might do 10 minutes of 10 different kettlebell exercises, one minute each, or five
different kettlebell exercises repeated twice, going through as nonstop as possible. Then immediately
jumping to heavy squats and heavy clean and presses.
Day 3
Your high rep of kettlebell swing cycles at whatever place of the cycle you might be.
Another Version
You might do this is pre exhaust specific body part/exercise and then use a heavy exercise that
stresses the same body part. For instance you might do 10 minutes of jerks then immediately do
heavy barbell presses, and 10 minutes of swings or snatches, you might immediately do heavy deadlifts or high pulls, etc.
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This will create either specific pre exhaustion of (all this is whole body work at the same time), a
particular area and body part and then forces that body part to go harder, faster, longer by using the
heavy exercises afterward. Or total body exhaustion and then using total body exercises to again
push into a harder, heavier, more enduring style.
Another Version
You can to mix and match these particular
styles. So that might look something like day one,
all heavy exercises followed by all kettlebell or all
your interval style movements.
Then to change it up even further we’ll put on
day two instead of day three, your high repetition
kettlebell cycle, and then day three would be the
opposite. Your interval or kettlebell pre exhaustion followed by your heavy lifting.
Day 1
Heavy Lifting then short intense cardio
Day 2
Kettlebell swing cycle
Day 3
Short intense cardio followed by heavy lifting
Noah Jeffries demonstrating hanging
chin-ups at 14 years old and a body
weight of 245lbs. Chin ups along with
rows are one of the premier exercises
for upper body pulling power.
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EXAMPLE 8
Example eight is again a three day schedule, but realize that all of these are flexible and you can
then work them into any particular format you wish. I’ll give you several set ups for that particular
schedule. The point of this schedule is variety and flexibility.
Day 1
Do all heavy lifting;
Day 2
All kettlebells. Now this could be 10 minutes of heavy kettlebells and then whatever
your cycle demands of your high repetition
kettlebell work. Or simply keep just the high
repetition kettlebell work as day two.
Day 3
This your completely free, optional, what I
like to call “outlaw” day. I wrote an article a
couple of years ago called Outlaw Strength in
which I basically told people, “Hey, do what
you want. Have fun with your training.” Pavel
likes to give this as a variety day in his programs, and this is exactly what this would be.
Barrel press with full keg. Lifting odd objects and
strongman training covers an incredible amount of
muscle with unusual demands and is a very effective
way to become monster-strong.
For this, feel free to choose from any of the kettlebell mixes that we’ve given. Maybe choose
several at a time, or work on a particular lift. The point being, do something fun, and do something different every day.
Within this you could use any of the two day examples from example six, and mix them in and
then simply add your third day as your outlaw day.
There are a lot of very cool options here, some of which might be doubling your kettlebell
swing volume. For instance, trying to repeat the same workout twice in the same week for a short
period of time, as a type of short term over training to create a rebound effect after a proper rest.
Or simply creating a different challenge on your own; mixing any of the challenges that we’ve
given you in the book.
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EXAMPLE 9
Example nine is a Monday thru Friday, five day week program. I’m going to give you a couple of
examples here to let you choose your own.
Within this would be a very “Pavelian” schedule, which would combine Power to the People
deadlifts and one arm presses; both for low repetition percentage based sets, two sets of five each,
waving up and down following the Pavel Tsatsouline Power to the People program. Then, a random
or specific kettlebell move done each day after that. Meaning, picking a different kettlebell move and
doing it for a random amount of time immediately afterward.
That might be 10 minutes of jerks on Monday, five minutes of heavy swings on Tuesday, 15 minutes of Turkish get ups on Wednesday, five minutes of speed based snatches on Thursday; and then
Friday which I would generally use in this program for your last training day of the week before
taking a day or two off would be your very high volume kettlebell cycle of swings.
A different example of this might be using just deadlifts from Power to the People every day of the
week, Monday thru Friday, and then a different move immediately afterward, and then a kettlebell
movement.
For instance, everyday starts with your deadlifts. Then you night follow with heavy press on
Monday, squats on Tuesday, chin ups on Wednesday, one arm snatches with a barbell on Thursday,
curls on Friday. Just as an example.
Or you can then mix liberally with other styles of lifting in there. For instance you might throw in
barrel lifting one day of the week. Stone lifting or carrying another day of the week multiple different strong man movements. Within that you might also mix in other types of cardiovascular
movements.
For instance, you might do swings. Obviously your last day of the week in your high volume cycle,
but you might do on your first day, sledge hammers. On your second day, barbell complexes. On
your third day, rowing. On your fourth day, you might do heavy bag work or sled pulling.
And then your high repetition swings on your other days. You can wave up and down the volume
and intensity of these particular movements given or the time given that day.
A final example of this particular style of training, the Monday through Friday training, would be
a different move, a differing heavy move, each one working one day a week.
Within this, if you are going to train the move once a week, I would go with a much higher intensity and depending on your goals, a slightly higher volume. So it might be squats on Monday, presses
on Tuesday, deadlifts on Wednesday, chin ups or rows on Thursday and a strongman movement on
Friday.
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Or it might be squats on Monday, strongman on Tuesday, deadlifts on Wednesday, strongman on
Thursday, presses on Friday. Any particular style that strikes your fancy, as long as you pick one
heavy barbell or strength based barbell or dumbbell movement, and then a corresponding strongman movement.
Then follow it with your kettlebells for the day. Within this you might also mix kettlebells in either
day for however you choose to do this.
Another example or two here might be barbells on Monday, kettlebells on Tuesday, strongman on
Wednesday, barbells again on Thursday and high repetition kettlebell work on Friday.
The idea being that if you’re going to train multiple days in a row, there has to be some significant
thought towards moderation of volume and intensity depending on how often you use a particular
exercise.
If you use it every day, you have to moderate the volume and intensity. If you use it once a week,
you can go quite a bit heavier with that and realize that your recovery is then based on systemic
recovery, not specific recovery to a particular exercise.
This gives you multiple examples to use in these particular styles of training for whatever style or
purposes suit you. Lots of ways to have fun!
Bud and Michael Castrogiovanni partner kettlebell juggling a pair of 40kg kettlebells.
This is just one of Michael’s specialties. It’s awesome conditioning and fun! If you
want to learn it Michael is the guy to teach it to you.
Michael also fits into the theme of the book by being an incredibly interesting guy.
Professional hike leader/trainer, all-around Renaissance man who has studied just
about everything and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.
MIXED
KETTLEBELL
TRAINING
FOR SUPERINTENSE
CARDIO
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Example 1
BATTLING
ROPES
B
attling ropes is one of the most incredible conditioning systems known to man.
Anybody you see doing a battling rope is working on the brainchild of John
Brookfield. He is the inventor and the daddy of this system. It is one of the most,
and one of the only, truly unique inventions in the strength and conditioning
world in the last 100 years. 99.9 percent of everything you’ve ever heard about has been done
before. Battling ropes is unique.
It is based on creating a wave in a rope and using velocity or speed to whip the rope both up and
down. It is incredibly unique in that it allows you to maintain velocity for long periods of time as
well as train your body to maintain power and speed for long periods of time and unify the whole
body, again, behind the arms in whipping that rope.
It has both an up and down component. When you move the rope, you are literally doing a concentric in both directions. So, there is no negative portion of the movement, very little soreness,
and an incredible cardiovascular challenge. If you are not training with ropes, you are missing out
on everything you can be.
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WORKOUT:
We’ll use a two handed rope basic drill, one end of the rope in either hand. You will do five
minutes of either a single rope drill or mixed rope drill (multiple styles of movement), depending
on what you wish to do, followed immediately by five minutes of kettlebell swings. You will rest
one minute. And, repeat that for three to five rounds.
Peter Ragnar
working with
Battling Ropes
Peter is an internationally known health expert
and leader in the Qi Gong and pro-youthing
movements and generally one of the most
amazing humans alive that simply cannot be
explained unless you meet him in-person.
Another of the incredible and interesting people who are part of this journey.
Peter is past 70 and yet looks like and has greater vitality than men in their 30’s. The
day this picture was taken he and I trained with swings, clubs and battling ropes.
Peter also casually bends spikes and horseshoes and teaches MMA classes. For more
info about Peter and his materials at www.roaringlionpublishing.com
Example 2
STONE
TRAINING AND
KETTELBELL
MIXING
S
tone training is one of the ultimate body strength builders, one of the most ancient
strength builders known to man and it is one of the most effective power building
implements anyone can use. (Here are two stone training workouts.)
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WORKOUT:
Husafelt stone carry and swing workout. The Husafelt stone is a famous stone from Iceland
that is carried in a bearhug style position for a distance. In this, you will pick up a stone, carry it
as far as you can and then swing for 50 to 100 reps one hand swings. Rest only as is necessary,
30 seconds to a minute per round or not at all if you can do it. (Five times through should do the
trick.) Take the stone back up carry, swing and repeat.
To progress in this you will try to carry the stone the same distance every time or very close to
it every time and then as you go or repeat the workout, you would try to carry the stone farther
and swing more reps every time.
Stone lifting
with 350 lb+
rock in Illinois
Example 3
LIGHT BARBELL
CONDITIONING
AND KETTLEBELL
MIX
T
he barbell is one of the ultimate strength tools, but what many people don’t get is
that it is also excellent for conditioning.
WORKOUT:
For this particular routine you will use any one of your favorite barbell exercises. For instance, it
could be barbell squats, or it could be several barbell exercises depend on how you wish to do it.
You will perform that barbell exercise with a light barbell continuously or as close to continuously as you can for one minute. Immediately put the barbell up, and swing for one minute. You
will then rest for one minute, and repeat. If you choose to use it with multiple barbells, I suggest
these exercises.
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Start with a barbell squat, then your swing. Barbell dead lift, then swing. Barbell bench press,
then swing. Barbell row, then swing. You will do as many repetitions as you can in one minute of
each of those exercises, and then always try to keep pace with your kettlebell at the 40 rep per
minute pace.
Mary Gosnell demonstrates
Barbell/kettlebell combination
For more info on how to use the
barbell for a completely unique
workout check out our Monster
Conditioning Barbells DVD at
www.strongerman.com
Note: Due to a condition with her
knees and back, this position is
locked out and straight for Mary.
Example 4
TIRE
FLIPPING
T
ire flipping is one of the most brutal and powerful conditioning and strength building tool in the strong man arsenal. If you did nothing but flip tires and added one
or two other things, you could be a monster. Guys who are truly strong can flip
some big tires. So here are two tire flipping and kettlebell mix workouts.
WORKOUT:
Flip a moderately heavy, to heavy tire 10 times. You will then immediately drop to 20 two
handed swings, heavy, two-handled with a t handle or a heavy kettlebell then flip the tire 10 more
times, then 60 one-handed swings, again with no rest. You will then rest minimally and then repeat
that for your desired number of rounds. I suggest three or more.
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Tire flip
sequence with
500 lb tire
Example 5
BODYWEIGHT
SPRAWL
T
he sprawl or burpee may be the ultimate body weight exercise.
It is certainly something that plays a big role in my personal conditioning and the
conditioning of my clients, and it is very hard to beat. It is in my “Top 10 AllTime,” obviously along with the kettlebell. You’ve probably already read the mention of one or
two of these workouts in the book, but for this, the first one we will use is a classic one that we
cycle back to all the time.
WORKOUT:
12:12 CHALLENGE WORKOUT
20 heavy swings, (in the original 12:12 version this was done with a 150lb T-Handle bell), and
then immediately complete 20 body weight sprawls. Repeating this five times non-stop.
Professional fighter, Josh Baccallao, who I trained as well as myself have the best times which are
just under six minutes. See if you can beat that.
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Sequence picture showing the sprawl. Many people
call this by other names and there are hundreds of
variations of it. It’s probably the most intense bodyweight conditioning exercise you can do. Pick
whichever version you prefer and knock it out!
Example 6
HEAVY
BAG WORK
H
eavy bag work is a brilliant conditioner. Again, it is similar to the kettlebells in
that it creates an explosive movement over and over again for a long period of
time and is excellent as a third way cardio style of conditioning. These workouts
are also excellent for fighters of any kind as well as many types of strong men
athletes because you can get a lot of bang for your buck with little or no ill effects on your max
strength.
WORKOUT:
In this one you punch the heavy bag as hard and fast as you can for 50 to 100 punches. If you use
a stationery stance and punch for speed you will go to 100 punches. If you use a more traditional
style where you move around punches with combinations, you will do a minimum of 50 punches,
and you will immediately grab a kettlebell and swing it 10 times. You will jump right back to the
heavy bag, do your 50 punches again and then go to 20 swings. Back to the heavy bag for 50, back
to the kettlebell for 30.
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In this way you will do a buildup and swing pyramid. So you will do 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,
80, 90, 100, and then back down 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10. You will get a very high volume swing as well as a tremendous punching or heavy bag kick boxing workout depending on
what you choose to do. Also one of the big benefits of this particular movement is the exercises that
you employ with punching are very similar in how they generate power to the swing.
You’re generating power and teaching your body that same power with the swing, you are making it immediately flow to nervous carryover into your heavy bag work, which will transfer into
real life gains in performance.
Example 7
THE
DUMBELL
T
he dumbbell is a powerful exercise tool. Obviously one of the basic tools for
strength from all around the world, just like the kettlebell. In this particular one,
we use the lighter dumbbell that you can do for fast, high repetition movements for
conditioning.
WORKOUT:
THE
LIGHT DUMBBELL STAR COMPLEX
The star complex is comprised of five exercises done with the dumbbell. You will repeat each of
these exercises for five to 10 reps as fast as possible. Then you will immediately drop the dumbbell,
hit 20-50 kettlebell swings as fast as possible, and repeat this five to 10 times, doing it nonstop and
as quickly as possible swings.
The star complex exercises is the two-hand dumbbell overhead swing which is a straight up
movement. The woodchopper movement coming from outside the left knee over the right shoulder.
The woodchopper movement coming from outside the right knee over the left shoulder. The dumb-
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bell twist or horizontal swing where you hold the dumbbell in front of the body and twist side to
side. Then the around the world circle, in which you get into an athletic stance, you begin to swing
the dumbbell to your left and go completely in a giant circle all the way around your body until you
reach back into the hang position, and then repeat the opposite direction.
Top position of an old-style 2-handed dumbbell swing. Part of the Star
Complex listed above. Using the dumbbell for non-linear moves is an
incredible strength and conditioning style. It allows you to work in angles
that most have never seen or thought of.
For more info on that check out our Monster Conditioning Dumbbells DVD
at www.strongerman.com
Example 8
SLED
PULLING
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Pulling a sled is one of the optimal strength and conditioning exercises you can do.
In fact every exercise we’ve done in here is hardcore; it’s meant to give you radical
strength and conditioning or we wouldn’t do it. The sled will not make you sore,
which is a huge benefit, because it has no eccentric movement. It’s all concentric for
a pure power generation movement. There is no “lowering phase”, therefore, literally no soreness
and little or no muscle damage.
A workout that I personally like and they are very useful for both driving up your conditioning
and strength and well as building your quads and hamstrings and getting you in shape.
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WORKOUT:
You’ll begin with 10 heavy two-handed swings, immediately take your sled pulling forwards
down to a second kettlebell, approximately a distance of say 30-40 yards. You will then grab the
kettlebell, do 50 one handed swings. Immediately grab your sled and drag backwards, so pulling
forward down the first leg, dragging backwards the second time, going back to your heavy swing.
You’ll then repeat that process 10 times.
Example 9
SLEDGE
HAMMER
T
he sledgehammer is one of the monster training tools, and you can get a ton out of
it. I suggest you get yours from StrongerGrip.com. They have two very high quality sledgehammer that you can load to as heavy as you wish to do.
The sledgehammer is a secret of the old time strongmen and boxers. It’s been used in different
kinds of martial arts training for centuries. It’s one of the original builders of human muscle.
Swinging a heavy hammer just builds a monster physique. It’s great for rotational power, for striking power, for pure endurance. It just is really, really cool. You need one.
You can swing a light one for very high velocity swings and for all kinds of different angled
swings and a very heavy one for, again, high velocity but heavy power swinging. Here are two of
our sledgehammer workouts.
WORKOUT 1:
This is a simple one, but it is a massive test of power and endurance. You will get a heavy hammer. Swing it as many times as you can in one minute. Then, you will grab a moderate kettlebell.
Swing that as many times as you can in one minute. You will attempt to repeat this as many times
as possible for one hour. It is very brutal, but it is the kind of cardio that burns fat off the body like
nothing else and gets you in the kind of shape that no one else is in.
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WORKOUT 2:
In this, you will use two sledgehammers, one heavy and one light, and two kettlebells, one heavy
and one light. You will swing your heavy hammer 10 times. Immediately drop it. Get your lighter
hammer and swing it for a very high velocity 20 times. Then, you will get your heavy kettlebell.
Swing it 10 times. And your light kettlebell immediately after and swing it 20 times. You will repeat
this for a minimum of 10 rounds with little or no rest.
This is an incredible loadable
sledgehammer made by
Strongergrip.com and probably
one of the best, most versatile
hammer for this type of training. For more info on training
with hammers check out our
sledgehammer training DVD at
www.strongerman.com
Example 10
MOBILITY AND
PHYSICAL
HARMONY
MOVEMENTS
T
his is an experimental style of training that we are doing along with a few friends
to see the affects of hard style training mixed with a softer style of training. So with
this you will have multiple workouts encompassing different styles of mobility
based movements or yoga and Qi Gong movements.
WORKOUT:
QI GONG MOVEMENT
Qi Gong is not a spiritual based system, but is a manipulation of the magnetic energy and the
physical energy, electrical energy, generated by the body to produce health, wellness, and physical
strength, as well as a calm, centered mind. Mixing this with the kettlebell is a very powerful system.
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Personally, I like Peter Ragnar’s, “Magnetic Qi Gong.” It’s a simple system that you can easily
use. I also highly enjoy John DuCane’s Qi Gong work and highly recommend it. RKC Dustin
Rippetoe is also an incredible source on Qi Gong and does some amazing practice from
Baguazhang. You can choose to use a different Qi Gong style that has multiple movements, or
multiple different postures that you hold. You may choose to work through an entire system of
different postures, or simply repeat the same one over and over again, for a minute, or however
long it takes you.
These phootos shown on
these pages are part of Qi
Gong sequence. I believe
that learning to control
your subtle energy is a key
to next level performance.
You can also see I’m holding a pair of magnetic balls
while doing it.
High Gauss magnets can
increase your energy,
recovery and your ability to
focus and feel your energy.
These are available from
www.roaringlionpublishing.com
For more info on Qi Gong
and mixing it into hardstyle training see our
Foundations DVDs at
www.strongerman.com
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Immediately after
your minute of Qi
Gong, you will do 10
heavy swings two
handed and 40 light
swings. You will then
drop the kettlebell and
go as quickly as possible back to your
qigong, focusing on
controlling the breath
and manipulating the
energy throughout the
body.
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More
PERSPECTIVES
ON THE
SWING
DAVE WHITLEY, MASTER RKC
WWW.IRONTAMER.COM
Building
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he kettlebell swing is near and dear to my heart, one of my favorite things in the
world. For a short time in the second half of 2010 I was advised not to swing
because of the way bone spurs in my knee were affecting the swing pattern and
beginning to cause imbalances and even some pain in my hip. These spurs apparently came about
over several years after a contact injury I sustained playing football in high school.
After having a very successful knee surgery in Jan of 2011 to remove the bone spurs and restore
full range of motion, I set upon a quest to not only re-teach myself to swing, but to pursue some
self-challenges with it to see where it would take me. Five months later I had reached several volume PRs and shed 30lbs of bodyfat. There were other factors including strength work, kettlebell
snatches ( the cousin of the swing) and sound dietary strategy, but the swing was and is the center of the universe in this quest.
A fundamental principle that I have always done my best to observe is “Technique First”. But
what is “good technique”? Kirk Karwoski explained it very well when I asked him. His explanation is accurate regardless of the exercise of movement pattern in question.
It is biomechanically correct for the individual. This means that it is safe and the body moves in
such a way to produce the best possible outcome or desired effect of the movement. It is aesthetically pleasing to watch. That look of practiced ease that comes only through a LOT of well-performed reps.
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With my new ROM post-surgery I had to re-evaluate what good technique is for me and then
proceed from there. It took a couple of weeks of very mindful practice to retrain my brain to
understand where the new lockout was on the improved knee. I never allowed the reps to get
sloppy. After that, it was a matter of simply upping the volume in a logical and progressive manner. As I write this I have progressed from a total volume of 187 16kg swings in 30 minutes for
my first post-surgical swing session in January to 1000 reps in just under 45 minutes with a 24kg
in June. This in no way represents the limits of what I think is possible, it is just a snapshot of
where I am right now. I am enjoying the process.
Here is an interesting side note on the connection between swings and snatches: I have always
taught that skill in kettlebell snatching is dependent on skill in the swing. On a whim on a
Saturday in early June, after doing thousands and thousands of swings in the manner listed below,
I decided to see how quickly I could do 200 reps in the kettlebell snatch with a 24kg. 7:44 seconds
later I was done, having not done any specialized preparation for it at all. After that I carried on
with my planned session of 750 swings with 24kg. The unplanned snatches served as a warmup.
Call it the art of snatching without snatching.
Back to the subject at hand: There are a lot of ways you can go about building up the volume
with your kettlebell swing. This is not the only way, but this is based on how I did it and how
many of my students have made dramatic improvements as well. Many thanks to my colleague
and friend Master RKC Mark Reifkind for giving me the general idea for the progression.
Step by step, here is how you do it.
— Establish baseline
— Determine rep range based on total volume and time
— Add volume progressively over time
— Repeat steps 1-3 with the new information.
Our hypothetical swinger will be training 3 days per week. You can certainly do more or less,
but we’ll stick with 3 for our example.
WEEK
ONE:
Day one: Test max number of QUALITY reps that can be performed in a given time period.
We’ll use 20 minutes for our example, as this become one hour per week. Not huge volume, but
a good place for most to start. Again this can be adjusted, but the import thing is to make meaningful comparisons. Comparing 250 reps in 20 minutes with 24kg to 350 reps in the same time
with the same weight is much more accurate and less subjective than 300 reps with 16kg compared to 150 reps with 32kg in the same time. For our example let’s say we hit 260 reps in 20
minutes with a 24kg. I’ll keep the math as easy as I can. If you hit an odd number, just round up
or down.
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Day two: Here is where it really begins. Take the total number of reps (260) and multiple it by
.70. This gives us 182. Now our job is to do 182 swings in 20:00, which has us operating at 70%
capacity. Spread the reps out evenly across the time period. In this case we’ll do 9 swings on the
top of each minute to get to 180. Sneak in an extra couple of reps in there somewhere, like on the
first and last set to get to your goal.
Day three: Repeat day two.
WEEK
TWO:
Day one:
do everything the same EXCEPT re-calculate for 80%, in this case 208. Do 10 reps per set and
sneak in an extra 2 on the first, seventh, 14th and final set.
Days 2 and 3: Repeat day one.
WEEK
THREE:
Same thing, except this week go at 90%. Our example will be 234. 11 reps per minute with 4
sneaky reps. Do this for all three days.
WEEK
FOUR:
Day one: 12 reps per minutes for 20:00.
Day two: 13 reps per minute for 20:00 (matching the old PR)
Day three: 14 reps per minute (new PR)
WEEK
FIVE:
Begin the whole process again with 70% of the new PR.
You’ll notice that by starting on the top of each minute the amount of work goes up and the
amount of rest goes down a little bit each week. Do this consistently over time and you’ll build
an incredible amount of work capacity and conditioning. After a 2-3 months feel free to increase
from 20 minutes to 25 or 30. After that start over again with a heavier weight. Just remember to
build incrementally and operate within your limits. Those limits will change.
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BRITT BUCKINGHAM
Swings
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n our little corner in the world of strength and conditioning, it’s awfully easy to become
overwhelmed with all manner and variety of exercises and methods of training.
Fortunately, for the “initiated” there are a few movements that stand supreme in both
their effectiveness and simplicity. One such movement is the SWING.
Although there are a variety of implements that a trainee can use for swings, I prefer the kettlebell as my implement of choice. The design of the kettlebell makes it a very adaptable tool to use
when swinging.
When I first discovered kettlebelling some 7 years ago, the swing was the first movement that I
attempted. I knew immediately that this was a valuable movement that would... and has had a
place in my training ever since. Through the years, I have participated in a wide range of sporting
activities...From powerlifting meets to endurance events up to marathon distance. No matter
what phase of training I am in the swing is a constant.
When I first began swinging, I mainly did heavier sets with low reps. I took rest breaks frequently and would typically complete 100-200 reps in a training session. It was enjoyable and
somewhat effective, but it wasn’t until I began to experiment with “high rep” swinging that I
really began to feel the full benefits of this movement.
My initial trials with higher reps would range from 400-600 reps. Although my rep numbers
were growing, I was still breaking the session up with frequent breaks. As my conditioning and
abilities improved, I began to extend the work sets before resting, initially attaining 100-200 reps
before taking a break. Again as my abilities improved, I was finding I could attain longer and
longer durations without putting the kettlebell down. In short order I was able to attain the milestone of 1000 reps without a rest. This took just under 29:00 to complete.
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To date my best attempt has been a 61:00 unbroken session of one arm swings with a 24kg kettlebell. In that time I completed about 2200 reps. I completed this in a block of training I was
doing for a marathon event. The long duration fit seamlessly with my training needs, and it was
a unique accomplishment.
Very often these days my attention is focused on endurance. While I do enjoy running, it is
tough on my body. Exercising the swing challenges my cardio-respiratory system in a very similar
manner as running. Without the pounding of a run, it does very good things for keeping me fit
and injury free while allowing less frequent running. Using the swing in this way is also very efficient use of time for those out there that are limited. Where once I would run for 30-40:00 then
come in an lift for 30-40:00, I can now get both my strength and endurance training in one brief
30-40:00 session. With the swing being a compound movement utilizing a good portion of the
bodies musculature, you will find that a
good challenging swing session leaves very little lacking for a complete workout.
Although I choose to challenge myself with the high to very high rep swing sessions, often going
unbroken, one should not think that there is no benefit to lower rep sessions. Just like distance
running is not for everyone, “distance” swinging is not for everyone either. There is plenty of
good that can be seen from lower rep sessions. There is no shortage of variability to swinging sessions. It is often limited by ones own creativity. I’d like to share a couple of sample sessions that I
have used with very good results. Both can be used as “high rep”, but each take a little different
approach to getting there.
Option 1: Lighter Weight- NonStop
Typically for my lighter sessions I use a 24-28kg kettlebell. This option of lighter unbroken or
nonstop swinging has a lot of variability in and of itself. Some that I use are:
Irrespective of time...Just count reps...
For more advanced swingers began with alternating 50-100 Left/ 50-100 Right
(beginner 15-30 reps per arm). As your grip fatigues...and it will...back down the
number of reps completed with each arm. Often I will begin my session with 100
reps and end with 20 rep switches. The key here is not to “redline” your grip. You
want to challenge this, but for me the key here is longevity, so switch as needed, just
match up the reps for each arm.
Swings for time intervals...
Just opposite of above, here I don’t count reps, but switch on a time interval. I might
start this session with 1:00-2:30 switches. Again as with the reps above, I will scale
back the time between switches as the session progresses and I tire. I might end the
session switching very :30 seconds. Through practice my cadence is very predictable
so I don’t concern myself about getting more reps on one arm than the other. Here
the goal is typically time. I generally prefer this timed approach as it is much less
mentally fatiguing than counting reps for minutes on end. After a while counting
itself becomes a chore and I find it takes away from my concentration on my efforts.
Either way you choose you will still get good reps and time from either approach.
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** Some guidelines for the above approaches...Like with anything, start conservatively and
build into your time and reps. I have generally seen quick improvements and you will be to high
reps and time in very short order.
Option 2: Heavier Weight
With these sessions I generally incorporate weights from 24-48kg
Swing to a Heart Rate...
Not unexpectedly...heavier swings have a more drastic effect on heart rate(HR). I’m
an average to maybe lighter guy (170-175lbs), so I cannot sustain a prolonged period
of time uninterrupted with a heavier kettlebell. My solution is I pick a training/HR
range and stay within that range for my desired period of time or rep goal.
EXAMPLE: Using a 40kg kettlebell...
Begin swings alternating arms very 10 reps until HR is 160 Beats Per Minute(BPM).
Once you hit the 160 ceiling number, finish that set, put the bell down and rest until
HR recovers to 145 BPM. At 145 began the swings began again until 160 is reached.
Continue in this fashion until the desired time or rep count is completed. This is very
effective if you are seeking to maintain a particular intensity throughout your session.
I also like to use the heavy bells in these session, and it is a totally different feel to light
unbroken sets. Obviously you can choose whatever HR range is appropriate for your
skill level or goal.
Drop Set Swings- Heavy to Light:
Drop sets allow for a great combination of heavy lower rep work along with lighter
high reps combined. My drop sets are usually 100-200 rep sets.
EXAMPLE:
48kg (10/ 10) 20
40kg (15/ 15) 30
32kg (20/ 20) 40
28kg (25/ 25) 50
24kg (30/ 30) 60
The above “drop set” is 200 total reps per set. Perform the reps with all five bells
back to back as one set. I typically perform this set 3-5x with a brief rest between sets.
The reps and bell weights are completely adaptable to fit your fitness level or goal.
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These are some great sessions. The intensity stays high with the heavier loads and the volume is
high with the sheer number of reps performed. I am very fond of this quote from Dan John:
“High Volume and high intensity, or as we used to say,
heavy weights and high reps, is probably the lost art of strength training.”
Adopting a swing session like one of the above delivers just that ...high volume/high intensity. I
have yet to find an exercise that is as efficient at building quality volume during a training session
as the SWING. Tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds are not out of the ordinary. That kind of
training develops a high degree of usable strength and better yet a work capacity that will not
quit. If you are lacking a little volume in your training, a couple of good swinging sessions a week
could be your missing link.
A
COUPLE OF NOTES ON TECHNIQUE
Experiment and do what works for you. I use what I call a “hybrid” swing. It is somewhat of a
middle road between a Hard Style technique and a traditional GS technique. As the weight I’m
using increases, I use more tension where needed. If the bell is lighter, then less tension is used. A
big key I have found in swinging longevity is use what is appropriate for the weight you are using.
Too much tension with a light bell can leave you prematurely fatigued. To little tension with a
heavy bell can leave you simply abused. Its not science here, be willing to experiment with technique and you will find a speedy road to high rep swinging
MIKE BARBER
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y name is Mike Barber. I’m 53 years old, 5’11, and weighed 250 this morning when I wrote this contributing piece. I started doing more swings
because of some swing articles Bud posted on Dragon Door and I decided to
ramp up my conditioning. I was probably 265 when I began that program. I also tried to eliminate sweets from my diet starting the first of the year.
My workout history is that I was in the military for 25 years and mostly did just running,
pushups and sit-ups to prepare for the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test). I was a staff guy (JAG),
so duty wasn’t physically demanding. About five years ago, I read Dinosaur Training by Brooks
Kubik, stumbled across Dan John’s Get Up! newsletter and found the Dragondoor website. I
started by doing dumbbell lifts because of Brooks’ and Dan’s influence working on double clean
and presses, then got into barbell deadlifts and clean and presses. I then decided to work with the
kettlebell.
I bought a 16 and 24kg kettlebell, the RKC book and started learning. I attended two David
Whitley workshops and found that I really enjoyed kettlebells. I was doing mostly swings, C&P,
a few snatches and mixed in pushups. David Whitley published two workouts that I’ve been
doing for a couple years now and have made good progress with them. On Monday, I do a 20
minute circuit of 10 pushups, 5r/5l bent-over rows and 25 swings, usually with a 24kg KB. I’ve
done this with a 32kg KB but not often because it’s may be too much of a good thing. When I
started with this workout (5 SEP 08), I did seven rounds.
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My PB with the 24kg, done this spring, is almost 13 complete rounds. The first time I did this
workout with the 32kg, I got six rounds. My PB, also this spring, is 1- rounds. I consider this a
respectable increase in conditioning. My regular Wednesday workout is a 15 minute circuit of 5
KB squats, 5/5 rows and 5 pushups. After that is a 3 minute break and then 5x20 swings with 30
seconds between sets. My first attempt produced eleven rounds. My PB is 15 complete rounds
using the 24kg bell.
That was my conditioning base when I began doing long sets of swings in January of this year.
Below is a list of my numbers at the start and then several selected workouts with the various
weights to provide information on my progress so far. I was swinging for high reps every few days.
7 JAN – 20kg x 200 in 7:06, I didn’t record the number non-stop (n/s).
9 JAN – 24kg x 200 in 8:48.
21 JAN – 16kg x 200 in 5:28. 200 n/s.
9 FEB – 20 kg x 200 in 5:33. 200 n/s.
2 MAR – 24 kg x 200 in 6:14. 132 n/s.
12 MAR – 32 kg x 200 in 7:44. 76 n/s.
24 MAR – 24 kg x 500 in 21:59. 108 n/s.
25 MAR – 16 kg x 300 in 7:59. 300 n/s.
2 APR – 24 kg x 200 in 5:31. 200 n/s.
27 APR – 20 kg x 300 in 8:03. 300 n/s.
30 APR – 32 kg x 200 in 6:50. 111 n/s.
7 MAY – 32 kg x 100 in 3:32. 81 n/s. 16 kg x 400 in 10:38. 400 n/s.
14 MAY – 32 kg x 200 in 7:06. 93 n/s.
22 MAY – 16 kg x 500 in 13:08. 500 n/s.
19 JUN – 16 kg x 1,000 in 37:11.
22 JUN – 20 kg x 400 in 10:30. 400 n/s.
26 JUN- 20 kg x 1,000 in 41:00.
29 JUN – 20 kg x 500 in 16:24. 203 n/s.
Goals met are in bold.
During this time I was also doing my usual Monday and Wednesday workouts and doing C&P
with the 32kg on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As a mental tip on this training I’ve noticed it’s easier
to do 400 swings in a row if you are trying to do 400 swings than if you are trying to do 1,000
swings. Think about beating your previous best with a concrete small increase not trying to make
a huge jump to the ultimate rep goal – that comes anyway. If you don’t it’s easy to get lost in the
numbers and keep thinking about how many you have left and wind up doing fewer in a row than
you’ve done before.
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y name is Peter Baker and I am one of the founders of the USF Kettlebell
Club. We meet regularly for copious amounts of kettlebell training and general awesome behavior. We’re also one of the first officially recognized
University Kettlebell Clubs.
At the USF (University of South Florida – Tampa), Kettlebell Club, we swing a lot. I am currently preparing for a Powerlifting competition and although at different points in my training
career I have not trained my deadlift I find it to be the strongest of the three competition moves. I
attribute this carry over in strength to kettlebell swings. Even though I have had deadlift absentia
in my workouts – my deadlift max has gone up. I am not the only one at the USF Kettlebell Club
to experience this. Another swinger is 40 lbs shy of a five wheel deadlift, and he only sporadically
trains the movement. As an added bonus he has dropped 40-plus pounds by swinging a kettlebell.
In my Powerlifting training I reserve two days of the week for heavy lifting and I do the competition lifts in the same order they appear in the competition—squat, bench and deadlift. If I feel
like it I will swing or snatch later on those same days. On Sundays I specifically train the kettlebell swing as well as the overhead press.
At its core, the swing is a high volume deadlift with no unloading period until you set the bell
down. The explosive nature of the swing reinforces the recruitment of your glutes and hamstrings
at the top of the movement which is essential for a lockout on your deadlift - No lockout equates
to your lift not counting in competition.
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A sticking point that occurs just before lockout is more than likely the product of weak glutes
and possibly the hamstrings. As a personal example, with years of training the swing and not as
long training the squat—a movement which strengthens the quadriceps—my sticking point is
about two inches from the floor due to weaker quads, and my lockout is strong due to glute and
hamstring strength. You cannot avoid powerful glutes and hamstrings with the swing and the
glutes whether people realize it or not are the real prime movers of the body.
I wrote the above paragraph to begin talking about this: There is a phenomenon in our society
called gluteal amnesia. This occurs when people who sit down too much have no strength in their
butts. When this happens, a heavy load is dispersed to their lower backs and their hamstrings,
and the stress can cause a pulled muscle, and hopefully nothing more serious, but really this is a
massive source of back pain, lack of mobility and general lack luster health in the American population. The hip hinge involved in swinging and deadlifting will rectify this in short order and it
is probably best to start with the swing, as the weight is lighter. The move is also simpler and
more accessible and allows more people to quickly concentrate on and fix those problems.
I’m 5’11 and 197lbs. As you can see I’m built a bit differently from Bud. Yet I can still swing a
40 and 48kg (88 and 106lbs) bells for reps with one hand. You can get strong quickly with the
swing. Bud and I opt for different styles of training the swing. Neither of them are wrong. Both
are mechanically correct, because I have experience with the swing I use a slightly different
method of performance and breathing (Girevoy Sport-style breathing). We both have the same
goals—to get stronger and have more endurance. Both of the methods work and with both we
can go increasingly longer, increasingly heavier. The methods are up to you just do something
safe and do something you enjoy doing and know you will stick with.
Since I mentioned it several times, I will reiterate that the swing can be a great tool to build a
great deadlift. Some ways that can help this happen that have not been covered yet involve swinging two kettlebells at the same time, and using heavy weights. With the double swing, you will
not have the opportunity to switch hands to save your grip, so your support grip will have to
endure. Rep ranges that have worked for me and still do are somewhere in the neighborhood
between 10 and 20 and as always, for your cardio, try to lessen the time it takes to do them.
Work with varying loads, do what makes you happy, whatever gives you results and is ultimately
safe.
One of the last things I would like to address is what the swing can do for your mental state of
being. The first time you reach 500 swings can feel like a daunting task. The next time you reach
500, it’s not really a big deal. Soon higher reps become the norm and you are getting better every
time. If you’re like me and into literature you can see the allegory we have here. Life has obstacles and once we pass one, it is easy to go over again and again, and the next obstacles are merely
extensions of that which we have done before—a deeper level of something basic. This is the take
home lesson of the swing. You will always have control of your mind. Your mind will help you
achieve everything you desire.
MATT BRANDT
My Short
Journey in
the Swing
“I
want to suck the marrow out of this life I have been blessed with.” Now if I
could only figure out how the hell I was going to do it and what was the best
path to take. I have been on a journey to find the right path for a long time
now. Bud’s Will-to-be-Iron style lays out the easiest most effective manner that any human being
with a kettlebell can accomplish super-human results. I have spent countless hours wasting my life
wondering what workout to do, what weight to use, what days to train... It was all time that
would have been better spent swinging my way to superior results, superhuman injury free results.
In my journey I looked for assistance from people that had a plan and had proof it worked. The
internet allows you to reach many different people in the training world. Some are really great and
others are internet ninjas that have ate all the pudding and left no proof of results. When I saw
Bud and what he had done and saw some of his ideas - I was really interested. The best part was
he had proof! He is a true example of how far you can push yourself and the results you can easily gain with a very simple effective plan.
As a man with 25 different jobs and 2 young children, I have very little time for fluff or plans
that were junk. As a firefighter I have very little time to fail under pressure. I needed something
that was easy to use and effective for the time I could invest. I always had a problem with going to
the gym and training hard and not being able to perform the next few days because I was so beat
up and sore. I also was concerned about injury. I couldn’t afford to be hurt. I was at a loss for
finding something to live up to the standards I was looking for.
I WILL BE IRON
In comes Bud.
We met several months before Bud finished the I Will Be Iron manuscript, but explained the
principles and theory. It took me some time to be able to really wrap my mind around Bud’s ideas.
But being lucky enough to meet him face to face and talk to him, I had no other option. I wasted
so much precious time trying other people’s ideas, I owed it to myself, my family, and my new
friend to go at it. A few months later he sent the rough draft of the book. When I applied the
training it opened a new world to me. Suddenly to me conditioning became KING. Suddenly I saw
a greater importance in being able to swing for countless reps. It was a different way to train. A
different way to reshape your life, to reach a goal and beat it. With the swing you can always push
one more rep. You can always go further. You can also do all this without injury. I already had a
background in kettlebells for a few years, so going back to the swing was nothing. But who would
have thought such a “simple” exercise can have a huge impact.
I Will Be Iron had an effect on many different parts of my life. First thing it did was it allowed
me to be consistent on my path. Even in weeks when I didn’t have a second to sit down or think
about what workout I had to do, I managed to get in the swings. That was huge to me. There are
people that have told me that your health has to be number one and you have to MAKE time to
workout. When you are standing in my shoes for a few minutes and see what I see, you will understand, but that was the first thing that I fell in love with. “EASE OF USE” Simple, straight to the
point, effective.
It has helped me mentally and allowed me to be able to deal with stress much easier. After doing
swings for a few months I realized that things that used to “push” me over the edge were easier to
deal with. Feeling good about yourself and your health has an amazing effect on your outlook on
life and things going on. I would have never believed it if you told me this months ago. Having to
be able to mentally overcome some of the swings sessions had taught me a few things. I even find
my long swing sessions to be less aggressive then I used to be when working out in the gym. The
swing has a calming side effect.
The other great side effect of the swings is that my grip (which was already decent in strength)
has greatly improved. I have been able to bend multiple spikes and nails with very little fatigue to
my hands. A few weeks into the swings I quickly realized that just being able to close a #3 gripper
for one or two reps meant very little when you were trying to hold on to a weight while swinging
for an hour. It showed me a flaw in the way I used to see training. Being strong is great. But being
strong for long is superior. I would have never seen this before. This was an example I had to feel
to believe.
Working with this program for a few months I have gained a great deal and learned a few things:
• You can see your limits, you can chose to pass them injury free.
• You can change things that you didn’t think were possible.
• You can become Iron, you can suck the marrow out of life. - All you need is the will and a
way. Bud gives you the way, you provide your will.
151
152
I WILL BE IRON
NEVER
ENDING
PROGRESS
I
n my quest to become iron, in my quest to really master training with the kettlebell, I
tried to find the ultimate practical end of each kettlebell exercise. I also looked around
the world to see what the best in the world had done, in each of the exercises I chose
to work on, to see where it was possible to take them. Here is something that I found.
You can literally make never ending progress for a long, long period of time, very possibly even a
lifetime, with the kettlebell.
There are goals out there that people have gone to which are absolutely unfathomable to the
mind of the average person. If you track your progress in multiple different ways, there are literally dozens of ways you can set personal records on a regular basis with the kettlebell.
For instance, most repetitions unbroken (non-stop), most repetitions with multiple different
weights unbroken, the most repetitions or most time for a particular movement with a particular
bell, with heavier bells, back and forth, and that doesn’t begin to include mixes or marathon type
training, etc.
By using the cycling style that we use, you’re almost continually ensured of PRs on a regular
basis until you get to a very, very high level. Even then, you really will make them for long periods
of time, if not a lifetime.
154
I WILL BE IRON
I believe there are possibly no humans alive who have literally maxed the kettlebell out. You can
always go a little harder, a little heavier, a little faster, and a little stronger. There are multiple
instances of people doing one arm jerks with 80 kilogram kettlebells, lifts with 70 kilogram kettlebells, even snatches and high repetition swings with 70 kilogram kettlebells, even juggling them,
and then ultimately incredible repetition performances with lighter kettlebells 16 and 24 kilograms, etc.
It doesn’t really matter what anyone else does. The point is that there is a lifetime of progress
here for you. Especially when you add switching back and forth (cycling weights and exercises),
and keeping track of multiple different of types of progress. For instance, if you use the four exercises that I focus on with the kettlebell, which are the swing, the snatch, the push press, and the
juggling style movement, the PRs are almost impossible to stop.
The secret of PRs is cycling up and down, with the kettlebells, using your heavier assistance
exercise to keep your strength up, pushing your cardiovascular conditioning as high as humanly
possible, and breaking down the mental barriers, the mental roadblocks. This happens to some
extent purely with the physical training. As you get more and more accustomed to fatigue, your
mind begins to get stronger. It means you begin to believe more and more. A natural progress of
toughening happens in which your mind begins knock these barriers down.
There are a couple of ways to “cheat” this progress. By using or not using a clock, by counting
or not counting repetitions, and simply by focusing on it in training. For instance, if your used to
counting your repetitions, you may play counting games such as counting backwards, counting
forwards, ladders, counting pyramids, (1, 5, 10, 5, 1 etc), by tens, etc., Soon you’ll realize you’ve
gone past your normal number of repetitions simply by focusing away from your physical suffering at the moment.
You may also find that you can do this by pacing without counting. One easy way to do this is
to pace by listening to music. Most of the time, I don’t necessarily listen to music in training
because I want to have pure mental focus. If you are not used to going for a certain period of time
and you listen to music, you may decide to simply swing as long as a particular song goes and then
stretch it out for a few more songs. You’ll suddenly find that you’ve gone longer and harder than
ever before. The same with push presses, etc.
All of these simply serve to bring to you that the mind is the ultimate driver of your progress.
What you focus on, what you believe will dictate how far you go.
The kettlebell, I believe, is also the optimal tool for building that progress. Here’s why: Most
people simply train barbells and other things like that in a “maximum” format. Since the kettlebell
lends itself, for the most part, to a “repetition” format, anyone can force themselves to keep going
for one more rep with a “light” weight. Versus a 500 or a 1,000 pound weight is by far more difficult mentally for many of people to conquer in pushing to a world class level of performance.
I WILL BE IRON
Anyone can continually convince themselves and keep going; that they can go harder, faster, and
longer, with a 35, 53, or 70 pound weight. In doing so, you can build yourself up from ordinary
to extraordinary; to an absolute level of incredible physical tenacity and physical strength that can
carry over to every area of your life. Beyond normal mental power into extraordinary physical
and mental ability.
155
156
I WILL BE IRON
www.MonsterConditioning.com
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“Full of detail and passion, Mastering the Hardstyle Kettlebell Swing is an instant classic.”
—Pavel Tsatsouline, author of Enter the Kettlebell!
Praise for Mastering the
HardStyle ™ Kettlebell Swing
Best DVD on the Swing
I have ever seen!
“If the Swing is the center of the training
universe, than Mark and Tracy’s new
DVD is the guide book on how to navigate your training through this universe. I
have literally watched this DVD 5 out of
the last 6 nights with pen and paper in
hand. This DVD walks the kettlebell newbie and the seasoned kettlebell veteran to
Swing mastery.
The drills, stretches and movements
taught in this DVD are the best I have
seen anywhere in the industry. Mark and
Tracy, with their many decades of combined experience, will have you swinging
your kettlebell with more power, grace,
and intention. The results will be: an
increase in fat loss, better stamina,
strengh, power, mobility, athleticism, body
awareness and overall movement skills.
To say I am impressed with this DVD is
an understatement. This DVD is a serious
game changer! Get this DVD and master
the SWING and take your physique and
body function to the highest possible
level.”
—FRANZ SNIDEMAN, Senior RKC, San
Diego, CA,
RKC system as well as the practice of all
ballistic kettlebell lifts the skills, tips and
drills in this DVD will fast track your
progress to more advanced skills.
problems with just the swing. Fast forward two years, and I am doing about
2,000 swings per month and my back has
improved about 80%.
Rif has championed the swing long before
the kettlebell’s surge in popularity and it is
fitting that the team that used the swing to
rehabilitate a broken body and shed
100lbs are now teaching others how to
get the same benefits they did. With realworld proven results from this simple
exercise the Reifkinds will share with you
how you too can master this elegant yet
powerful movement.”
I purchased this DVD because I want my
swing to be the best it can be. The DVD is
replete with stretches to improve range of
motion, and drills, and workouts designed
to entrain good form into your motor
memory so that your technique improves.
An example: doing planks immediately
prior to two-handed swings makes it
much easier to correctly lock out at the
top of the swing than just grabbing a bell
and starting to swing "cold." Think about
it--at the top of the swing you are bracing
your abs and firing your glutes and lats.
The lockout is a plank. The DVD is filled
with little tricks like this.
—ANDREW READ, RKC Team Leader,
Australia
A Great Blend of
Information, Passion
and Personal
“This is by far the best exercise DVD I
have ever used. The first DVD walks you
through the component skills and explains
the progressions that go into the swing.
The second DVD has two excellent workouts that reinforce the fundamentals and
challenge you in a real world functional
series of exercises. The Reifkinds are both
knowledgeable and convey this knowledge in a very professional, yet fun, manner. I have been working out for over 40
years and this is an excellent example of
what fitness and practice should be. I use
it personally and share it with my friends
and clients. I cannot recommend it highly
enough!”
Master the movement
with the Master trainer!
—BILL HYSELL, CSCS / Frankfort, NY
“I’ve seen kettlebell training from all levels—from beginner workshops to the
HKC to the RKC and beyond. What the
Reifkinds have done here is give you the
single best tool to start your kettlebell
education with.
Time and Money
Well-Invested
Because the swing is so central to both the
“I am 40 years old and started with kettlebells two years ago out of desperation. I
had chronic low back pain and sciatica,
and heard about them from a 64-year old
kinesiologist who had fixed his own back
I would recommend this DVD to anyone
who is new to kettlebells or who has been
training on their own (i.e. not with an
RKC/HKC instructor) for 5 years or less.“
—TOM ROONEY, Dayton, OH
This DVD has my
highest recommendation!
“The Kettlebell Swing, being the most
important kettlebell exercise to master, is
one that you need to spend lots of time
practicing. Most people don’t understand
how important and key this exercise is.
Over the years the HardStyle swing has
evolved to a better more efficient exercise
than it already is. Tracy and Mark do an
excellent job breaking down this foundation exercise for anyone from the beginner
to the seasoned kettlebell enthusiast. This
comprehensive DVD will not only perfect
your kettlebell swing, but will show you
how to use kettlebell swings the "Tracy
Reifkind" style in a workout. This DVD
has my highest recommendation!”
—LAUREN BROOKS, RKC Team
Leader, San Diego, CA
Order Mastering Swing DVD online:
www.dragondoor.com/DV080
“In The Royal Family
of Exercise,
The Kettlebell
Swing Is King”
S
Get the ripped physique, the ultra-conditioning
and the explosive power you always wanted—
in minimum time and for minimum expense…
ince Pavel Tsatsouline introduced the modern world to the glories
of HardStylet™ kettlebell training in 2001, the fitness landscape
has changed forever. This simple tool, the kettlebell, when used as
part of Pavel’s now legendary HardStyletm system, has helped sculpt
finely-chiseled new physiques—with dramatic power to match—for tens of
thousands of grateful recipients.
Master RKC, Mark Reifkind and RKC, Tracy Reifkind are uniquely qualified to help YOU TOO rapidly achieve the same spectacular physical
transformations.
Tracy’s innovative kettlebell swing programming and personal 100lb plus
weight loss story have won her national acclaim—and a position of honor
in Tim Ferriss’s runaway bestseller The 4-Hour Body.
As its title indicates, Mastering the HardStyle™ Kettlebell Swing provides
absolutely everything you need, to knock it out of the performance park—
and enjoy a new life of supreme strength and vitality. Detailed, scientifically-structured progressions give you a rock-solid technical foundation
and proficiency. Two bonus, follow-along workouts further instruct and
inspire you to achieve the ultimate in fat
loss, high-yield cardio and explosive power.
As a former college gymnast, powerlifting champion, national coach, competitive bodybuilder, ultra-marathoner and the founder of the first-ever
studio in the US devoted entirely to kettlebell training, Mark brings a
wealth of experience and expertise in his presentation of the secrets of the
HardStyle™ kettlebell swing.
Get these 9 great benefits from
the HardStyle™ kettlebell swing:
1) Build more muscle—with a chiseled,
compact, toned look
2) Lose fat—in a hurry, but with long-term,
sustainable results
3) Increase strength—with surprising carryover for innumerable physical activities
4) Train hardcore cardio—for a powerful,
“ageless” heart
5) Build speed and power—to be as explosive
and as dynamic as you want to be
6) Increase your work capacity—to go longer
and harder at any task
7) Develop muscles you never knew you
had—for a perfectly proportioned physique
8) Strengthen and stabilize your back—a
major key to pain-free, high-level
performance and athletic longevity
9) Build powerful legs—without wrecking
your knees
Who is Mastering the HardStyle™
Kettlebell Swing For?
1) You’ve been hearing about kettlebells and don’t know where to start.
2) You’ve heard that nothing burns more calories or works more muscle than kettlebell swing training but you don’t live close to a certified instructor and want to
learn the best and the safest way to swing the kb.
3) You’re a trainer who wants to get kettlebell certified and wants to know the
details of how the RKC teaches the “Center of its Universe”, The swing.
4) You’ve tried other kettlebell methods and haven’t gotten the in depth, detailed
instruction you want.
5) You’re a busy person who doesn’t have all day to go to the gym and spend hours
on a bike, lifting weights and doing yoga to maintain a base level of fitness and
tone. You need a much more efficient solution .The HardStyle Kettlebell Swing.
6) You want to get strong at the same time you get your cardio in and don’t have
time for both.
7) You’re small and you want to build up.
8) You’re too big and you want to slim down.
9) You’re a serious minimalist who loves the idea of one bell, one weight and one
movement for a total body, complete workout.
10) You’re a high mileage comrade who’s been through the mill and whose knees and
back can’t tolerate what they used to. You need a serious exercise that just builds
you up without tearing you down. You’re no longer training for ‘fitness’, you are
training for Life.
11) You’re a serious competitive athlete that wants to know one of the best tools
around for building and maintaining amazing power and speed that translates big
time to your strength lifts and sport. In Sport, Speed is King, and Power is Queen.
Nothing builds both like the HardStyle Kettlebell Swing.
12) You’re no longer a beginner kettlebell trainer and are ready to go into Deep Skill;
the subtleties and nuances interest you.
13) You want to know how to do the only exercise that Tracy used to achieve incredible muscle tone and strength after losing over 100 lbs.
Mastering the
HardStyle™
Kettlebell
Swing
The Ultimate Exercise
for Fat Loss, High-Yield
Cardio and Explosive
Power
With Mark Reifkind, Master
RKC and Tracy Reifkind, RKC
#DV080 $34.95 DVD
Running time: 3 hours 5 minutes
Order Mastering Swing DVD online:
www.dragondoor.com/DV080
“Kettlebell Training...The Closest
Thing You Can Get to Fighting,
Without Throwing A Punch”
—Federal Counterterrorist Operator
The kettlebell. AK-47 of physical
training hardware. Hunk of iron on a handle.
Simple, sinister, brutal—and ferociously effective
for developing explosive strength, dramatic power
and never-say-die conditioning. The man’s man’s
choice for the toughest, most demanding, highestyield exercise tool on the planet. Guaranteed to
forge a rugged, resilient, densely-muscled frame—
built to withstand the hardest beating and dish it
right back out, 24/7.
Once the prized and jealously-guarded training
secret of elite Russian athletes, old-school strongmen and the military, the kettlebell has invaded the
West. And taken no prisoners—thanks to former
Soviet Special Forces physical training instructor
and strength author, Pavel Tsatsouline’s 2001
publication of The Russian Kettlebell Challenge
and his manufacture of the first traditional
Russian kettlebell in modern America.
American hardmen of all stripes were quick to
recognize what their Russian counterparts had
long known—nothing, nothing beats the kettlebell, when you’re looking for a single tool to dramatically impact your strength and conditioning.
A storm of success has swept the American S & C
landscape, as kettlebell “Comrades” have busted
through to new PRs, broken records, thrashed
their opponents and elevated their game to new
heights of excellence.
With Enter the Kettlebell! Pavel delivers a significant upgrade to his original landmark work, The
Russian Kettlebell Challenge. Drawing on five
years of developing and leading the world’s first
and premiere kettlebell instructor certification
program, and after spending five years of additional research into what really works for dramatic results with the kettlebell—we have Enter
the Kettlebell!
Pavel lays out a foolproof master system that
guarantees you success—if you simply follow the
commands!
• Develop all-purpose strength—to easily
handle the toughest and most unexpected demand
• Maximize staying power—because the
last round decides all
• Forge a fighter’s physique—because the
form must follow the function
Enter the kettlebell!
and follow the plan:
1. The New RKC
Program Minimum
Enter the
Kettlebell!
Strength Secret of
The Soviet Supermen
by Pavel #B33 $34.95
Paperback 200 pages 8.5” x 11”
246 full color photos,
charts, and workouts
With just two kettlebell exercises, takes you
from raw newbie to solid contender—well-conditioned, flexible, resilient and muscular in all the
right places.
2. The RKC Rite of Passage
Jumps you to the next level of physical excellence with Pavel’s proven RKC formula for exceptional strength and conditioning.
3. Become a Man Among Men
Propels you to a Special Forces level of conditioning and earns you the right to call yourself a
man.
DVD with Pavel
When you rise to the challenge—and Enter the
Kettlebell!—there will be no more confusion, no
more uncertainty and no more excuses—only raw
power, never-quit conditioning and earned respect.
DVD Running time: 46 minutes
#DV036
$29.95
Purchase Pavel’s Enter the Kettlebell! book and
DVD as a set and save… Item #DVS011 $59.90
Order Enter the Kettlebell! online:
www.dragondoor.com/B33
Dragon Door Customer Acclaim for
Return of the Kettlebell
Well, here it is...the book I always wante
d.
“There is not enough hyperbole in my body
to express how much I like this book. To
say that this work
is ‘amazing’ is an understatement. Anyo
ne who plays with kbells must use this book
as a resource.
Completing the program and goals set in
this book is a worthy fight for any man.
”
—Dan John, Senior RKC - Murray, UT
Enter the Kettlebell sets the standard from boy to man
absolutely magnificent book Return of the
“Pavel sets the standard from man to monster in his
for explosive muscle gains and
Kettlebell. Pavel has outdone himself and laid out the plan
you chose to follow the path.. you gotta
if
you
of
ed
requir
is
extraordinary strength—only one thing
don’t Incredibly HULK your shirt in the
have the heart to follow it through... just be careful you
process :)”—Kenneth Jay - Slangerup, Denmark
Greatest book/program around
Another Home Run!
“Using the key principles of the RKC Pavel teaches us how
to ‘muscle up’ with double bell work, overload eccentrics
and how to use explosive power as well as high tension to
get the job done and build some serious muscle. When
powerlifing squat god Donnie Thompson says double bell
front squats make him work then ALL should listen!
Bravo Pavel, again, for leading the charge of the bleeding
edge of the state of the art. No matter what the training
goal, Pavel has a kettlebell solution that WORKS. Get this
book and DVD!”—Mark Reifkind, Master RKC
Instructor - San Jose Ca
with
If you want to build mass
kettlebells, this is IT!
d to start practicing the
“I ordered RTK and decide
t I started using them
tha
drills. I liked it so much
most from the program
the
get
to
er
exclusively. In ord
cified for 12 weeks. In that
I did the progressions as spe
about 7 pounds of muscle.
time frame I quickly put on
and shoulders. All while
Mostly on my upper back
ries.”
eating at maintenance calo
CA
go,
Die
San
ell
Kins
—Matt
“If size and strength are what you’re after
this is
the program for you. Pavel is a genius. He
has
once again laid out the ground work and
given
you a program that is spot on and secon
d to none.
The program is very well explained and
illustrated
and if followed will get you the results you
are
looking for. When I started RTK I had a
goal of
putting on 15 lbs. in 4 months. Well I’ve
already
put on 10 lbs. in 4 weeks. And I have a
long way
to go with my volume. If you follow the
template,
eat and sleep you can’t go wrong with this
program. Can’t wait to walk through walls
.
Thanks again Chief Instructor.”
—Scott Herman, RKC - Lenoir, N.C.
Better than great!
“For the serious student of the Iron
Game this book (like all of Pavel’s)
deserves multiple reads. The details
and training gems contained in this
book are numerous and invaluable.
It’s not about the sets and reps, it’s
about the technique and application.
Using the lessons taught in this book
will definitely pack dense athletic
muscle on your frame. Don’t cheat
yourself, earn it with ETK and then
apply RTK. You will get results.”
—Jeff O’Connor, Master RKC Talala, OK
The Same High Standard And Attention To Detail
fun as
“In addition to what other people have said, this program is fun. Challenging, but
that
found
have
I
ient.
time-effic
very
and
way)
of
kind
vicious
a
(in
elegant
well. It is also
The
it.
compress
to
is
aim
the
y
eventuall
only the heavy day takes a large space of time and
t.
equivalen
ETK
their
than
easier
much
speaking,
relatively
are,
days
light and medium
This
During grind blocks, due to the asymmetric drop in weight as well as drop in volume.
day.
heavy
next
the
tackle
to
eager
and
bit
the
at
chewing
left me really
how
Other people have mentioned weight gain. I haven’t noticed any but I don’t know
back
upper
and
shoulders
my
however,
ely
much you would expect after 6 weeks. Subjectiv
Kuwait
n
Al-Sabah
—Suleima
:)”
have exploded
Order Return of the Kettlebell online:
www.dragondoor.com/B40
Order Return of the Kettlebell online:
www.dragondoor.com/B40
How to Master Advanced
Kettlebell Drills—And
Explode Your Strength!
T
horoughly master Pavel’s
Enter the Kettlebell! program and you can consider yourself a “Kettlebell
Black Belt”. But once
you’re a Kettlebell Black Belt, then
what?
Well, say hello to Return of the
Kettlebell, which takes it for granted
you already own those Black Belt
fundamentals—and offers you a dramatically tougher, yet highly systematic program for explosive and massive muscle gain.
Return of the Kettlebell’s protocols were born from Pavel’s insights
while training elite power athletes.
Several champions made astonishing, almost mysterious, strength and
muscle gains—at least two broke
new powerlifting world records—
thanks to kettlebell training. Pavel
decided to reverse engineer this
“What the Hell” effect experienced
by the champions—so all others
could benefit from their success.
Return of the Kettlebell presents
the final fruit of Pavel’s research—
combining the very best of ancient
lifting wisdom with modern day scientific breakthroughs.
Like the Breakfast of Champions,
consume what’s on the Return of the
Kettlebell menu and watch yourself
grow—and grow!
“I have used kettlebells in my program for years with fantastic results.
The combination of movements provides the professional athlete with a
unique challenge available from no
other piece of equipment. I have followed Pavel’s principles in designing
my training systems. Now with
Return of the Kettlebell you can take
your training to the next level. The
guidelines outlined in the DVD and
companion book are ideal for athletes who must be strong and explosive. The book has excellent program design hints that allow you to
adapt the training to the specific
goals you seek. The book and DVD
are a STRONG combination that
everyone should have in their own
personal strength and conditioning
library.”—Stan Kellers, Assistant
Coach of Strength,
Cleveland Cavaliers
“Pavel is the reason I started using
kettlebell exercises with all my
clients so I was anxious to get my
hands on Return of the Kettlebell.
Pavel, as always, gets straight to the
point with his concise, logical, and
entertaining writing style. The pictures perfectly depict what you
should and shouldn’t do to master
these awesomely explosive lifts. The
book is loaded with tips, tricks, and
proven training principles that will
supercharge your body and performance.
The Return of the Kettlebell DVD
is the best kettlebell resource I’ve
seen to take your physique and performance to the next level. Pinpoint
technique is essential to your success, and Pavel knows it. He shows
each exercise from every angle and
explains what you should and
shouldn’t do to get the greatest
reward. This DVD, plus hard work,
equals your best body.”—Chad
Waterbury, neurophysiologist,
author of Huge in a Hurry
“Pavel’s Return of the Kettlebell is
a no-nonsense guide to advanced
kettlebell training. This DVD is for
people who have mastered the fundamental of kettlebell training and
understand the importance of linked
motions and good spinal biomechanics in developing strength and
power. He has incorporated new
research on high velocity power
training and the stretch-shortening
cycle to maximize strength fitness
using minimal equipment. His
emphasis is always on good technique. Return of the Kettlebell will
improve fitness and performance in
any experienced power athlete. This
is a ‘must have’ DVD for any serious
student of sport.”—Thomas Fahey,
Ed,D., Professor of Kinesiology,
California State University, Chico
“As a strength athlete and a
coach, I applaud the effort and quality of this DVD. Although I am
known for my hyperbole so I need
to be careful here, but let me say
this: if you only have one DVD on
the shelf for the game of strength
and conditioning, this is the DVD. I
enthusiastically recommend this
work without hesitation to anyone
interested in any facet of fitness and
health.”—Dan John, author of
Never Let Go
Return of the
Kettlebell
Explosive Kettlebell
Training for Explosive
Muscle Gains
by Pavel #B40 $39.95
Foreword by Donnie Thompson,
RKC, World Super Heavyweight
Powerlifting Champion
Paperback 146 pages 8.5” x 11”
DVD
by Pavel
#DV062 $34.95
DVD Running time:
48 minutes
With Kenneth
Jay, and
Missy Beaver,
RKC
Purchase Pavel’s Return of the Kettlebell! book
and DVD as a set and save… Item #DVS019 $67.95
Order Return of the Kettlebell online:
www.dragondoor.com/B40
RUSSIAN KETTLEBELLS
The World’s #1 Handheld
Gym For Extreme Fitness
Use Kettlebells to:
• Accelerate your all-purpose strength—so
you can readily handle the toughest demands
• Hack away your fat—without the dishonor of
dieting and aerobics
• Boost your physical resilience—to repel the
hardest hits
• Build your staying power—to endure and
conquer, whatever the distance
• Create a potent mix of strength-withflexibility—to always reach your target
• Forge a fighter’s physique—so form matches
function
• Be independent—world’s #1 portable gym
makes you as strong as you want to be,
anywhere, anytime
Kettlebells Fly Air Force One!
“There’s a competitive reason behind the
appearance of kettlebells at the back doors and
tent flaps of military personnel. When Russian
and US Special Forces started competing against
each other after the Soviet Union broke up, the
Americans made a disturbing discovery. “We’d
be totally exhausted and the Russians wouldn’t
even be catching their breath,” says… [a] Secret
Service agent… “It turned out they were all
working with kettlebells.”
Now, half the Secret Service is snatching
kettlebells and a set sometimes travels with the
President’s detail on Air Force One.”—Christian
Science Monitor
Pavel’s Kettlebell FAQ
What is a ‘kettlebell’?
A ‘kettlebell’ or girya (Russ.) is a traditional Russian cast iron weight
that looks like a cannonball with a handle. The ultimate tool for
extreme all-round fitness.
The kettlebell goes way back – it first appeared in a Russian
dictionary in 1704 (Cherkikh, 1994). So popular were kettlebells in
Tsarist Russia that any strongman or weightlifter was referred to as a
girevik, or ‘a kettlebell man’.
“Not a single sport develops our muscular strength and bodies as well
as kettlebell athletics,” reported Russian magazine Hercules in 1913.
“Kettlebells—Hot Weight of the Year”—Rolling Stone
Why train with kettlebells?
Because they deliver extreme all-round fitness. And no single other
tool does it better. Here is a short list of hardware the Russian kettlebell
replaces: barbells, dumbbells, belts for weighted pullups and dips, thick
bars, lever bars, medicine balls, grip devices, and cardio equipment.
Vinogradov & Lukyanov (1986) found a very high correlation
between the results posted in a kettlebell lifting competition and a great
range of dissimilar tests: strength, measured with the three powerlifts
and grip strength; strength endurance, measured with pullups and
parallel bar dips; general endurance, determined by a 1000 meter run;
work capacity and balance, measured with special tests.
Voropayev (1983) tested two groups of subjects in pullups, a standing
broad jump, a 100m sprint, and a 1k run. He put the control group on
a program that emphasized the above tests; the experimental group
lifted kettlebells. In spite of the lack of practice on the tested exercises,
the kettlebell group scored better in every one of them! This is what we
call “the what the hell effect”.
Kettlebells melt fat without the dishonor of dieting or aerobics. If you
are overweight, you will lean out. If you are skinny, you will get built
up. According to Voropayev (1997) who studied top Russian gireviks,
21.2% increased their bodyweight since taking up kettlebelling and
21.2% (the exact same percentage, not a typo), mostly heavyweights,
decreased it. The Russian kettlebell is a powerful tool for fixing your
body comp, whichever way it needs fixing.
Kettlebells forge doers’ physiques along the lines of antique statues:
broad shoulders with just a hint of pecs, back muscles standing out in
bold relief, wiry arms, rugged forearms, a cut-up midsection, and strong
legs without a hint of squatter’s chafing.
Liberating and aggressive as medieval swordplay, kettlebell training is
highly addictive. What other piece of exercise equipment can boast that
its owners name it? Paint it? Get tattoos of it? Our Russian kettlebell is
the Harley-Davidson of strength hardware.
“Kettlebells—A Workout with Balls”—Men’s Journal
Order Dragon Door Kettlebells online:
dragondoor.com/shop-by-department/kettlebells/
“… kettlebells are a unique conditioning tool and a powerful one as well that
you should add to your arsenal of strength... my experience with them has been
part of what’s led me to a modification in my thoughts on strength and
bodyweight exercises… I’m having a blast training with them and I think you
will as well.”
Who trains with kettlebells?
Hard comrades of all persuasions.
Soviet weightlifting legends such as Vlasov, Zhabotinskiy, and Alexeyev started their
Olympic careers with old-fashioned kettlebells. Yuri Vlasov once interrupted an interview
he was giving to a Western journalist and proceeded to press a pair of kettlebells. “A
wonderful exercise,” commented the world champion. “…It is hard to find an exercise
better suited for developing strength and flexibility simultaneously.”
The Russian Special Forces personnel owe much of their wiry strength, explosive agility,
and never-quitting stamina to kettlebells. Soldier, Be Strong!, the official Soviet armed
forces strength training manual pronounced kettlebell drills to be “one of the most
effective means of strength development” representing “a new era in the development of
human strength-potential”.
The elite of the US military and law enforcement instantly recognized the power of the
Russian kettlebell, ruggedly simple and deadly effective as an AK-47. You can find Pavel’s
certified RKC instructors among Force Recon Marines, Department of Energy nuclear
security teams, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, the Secret Service Counter Assault Team,
etc.
Once the Russian kettlebell became a hit among those whose life depends on their
strength and conditioning, it took off among hard people from all walks of life: martial
artists, athletes, regular hard comrades.
—Bud Jeffries, the author of How to Squat 900lbs. without Drugs, Powersuits, or
Kneewraps
How do I learn to use the kettlebell?
From Pavel’s books and videos: The Russian Kettlebell Challenge or From Russia with
Tough Love for comrades ladies. From an RKC certified instructor; find one in your area
on RussianKettlebell.com. Kettlebell technique can be learned in one or two sessions and
you can start intense training during the second or even first week (Dvorkin, 2001).
“…I felt rejuvenated and ready to conquer the world. I was sold on the
kettlebells, as the exercises were fun and challenging, and demanded
coordination, explosion, balance, and power… I am now on my way to being
a better, fitter, and more explosive grappler, and doing things I haven’t done in
years!”
—Kid Peligro, Grappling magazine
“I can’t think of a more practical way of special operations training… I was
extremely skeptical about kettlebell training and now wish that I had known
about it fifteen years ago…“
What is the right kettlebell size for me?
Kettlebells come in ‘poods’. A pood is an old Russian measure of weight, which equals
16kg, or roughly 35 lbs. An average man should start with a 35-pounder. It does not
sound like a lot but believe it; it feels a lot heavier than it should! Most men will eventually
progress to a 53-pounder, the standard issue size in the Russian military. Although
available in most units, 70-pounders are used only by a few advanced guys and in elite
competitions. 88-pounders are for mutants.
An average woman should start with an 18-pounder. A strong woman can go for a 26pounder. Some women will advance to a 35-pounder. A few hard women will go beyond.
—Name withheld, Special Agent, U.S. Secret Service Counter Assault Team
Am I kettlebell material?
Kettlebell training is extreme but not elitist. At the 1995 Russian Championship the
youngest contestant was 16, the oldest 53! And we are talking elite competition here; the
range is even wider if you are training for yourself rather than for the gold. Dr. Krayevskiy,
the father of the kettlebell sport, took up training at the age of forty-one and twenty years
later he was said to look fresher and healthier than at forty.
Only 8.8% of top Russian gireviks, members of the Russian National Team and
regional teams, reported injuries in training or competition (Voropayev, 1997). A
remarkably low number, especially if you consider that these are elite athletes who push
their bodies over the edge. Many hard men with high mileage have overcome debilitating
injuries with kettlebell training (get your doctor’s approval). Acrobat Valentin Dikul fell
and broke his back at seventeen. Today, in his mid-sixties, he juggles 180-pound balls and
breaks powerlifting records!
“Kettlebells are like weightlifting times ten.”
“Kettlebells are like weightlifting times ten. …If I could’ve met Pavel in the
early ‘80s, I might’ve won two gold medals. I’m serious.”
—Dennis Koslowski, D.C., RKC,
Olympic Silver Medalist in Greco-Roman Wrestling
Classic RKC Kettlebells (Cast Iron/E-Coated)
Item
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#P10P
#P10M
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#P10A
#P10S (Women’s)
#P10H
#P10B
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Weight
10 lb
14 lb
18 lb
10 kg
12 kg
14 kg
16 kg
16 kg
20 kg
24 kg
28 kg
32 kg
36 kg
40 kg
44 kg
48 kg
(22 lb)
(27 lb)
(31 lb)
(36 lb)
(36 lb)
(45 lb)
(53 lb)
(62 lb)
(71 lb)
(80 lb)
(89 lb)
(97 lb)
(106 lb)
Price
$37.95
$49.95
$59.95
$64.95
$69.95
$79.95
$87.95
$87.95
$97.95
$107.95
$129.95
$139.95
$159.95
$179.95
$219.95
$239.95
MAIN USA PUERTO RICO AK&HI
S/H $14.00
S/H $16.00
S/H $22.00
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S/H $28.00
S/H $34.00
S/H $38.00
S/H $38.00
S/H $44.00
S/H $49.00
S/H $53.00
S/H $55.00
S/H $58.00
S/H $64.00
S/H $69.00
S/H $75.00
$47.00
$51.00
$65.00
$73.00
$80.00
$93.00
$104.00
$104.00
$123.00
$141.00
$162.00
$186.00
$203.00
$223.00
$241.00
$261.00
$53.00
$57.00
$71.00
$79.00
$86.00
$99.00
$110.00
$110.00
$122.00
$139.00
$157.00
$193.00
$209.00
$229.00
$247.00
$267.00
CAN
$35.00
$41.00
$46.00
$52.00
$58.00
$64.00
$72.00
$72.00
$85.00
$94.00
$107.00
$121.00
$134.00
$148.00
$160.00
$175.00
SAVE! ORDER A SET OF CLASSIC KETTLEBELLS & SAVE $$$
Save $15.00
Save $15.00
#SP10 Classic Set—35, 53 & 70 lb.
#SP11 Women’s Set—10, 14 & 18 lb.
$320.85
$132.85
S/H $142.00
S/H $52.00
$431.00
$163.00
ALASKA/HAWAII KETTLEBELL ORDERING
Dragon Door now ships to all 50 states, including
Alaska and Hawaii, via UPS Ground.
guaranteed, fully tracked ground delivery, available
to every address in all of Canada’s ten provinces.
Delivery time can vary between 3 to 10 days.
CANADIAN KETTLEBELL ORDERING
Dragon Door now accepts online, phone and mail
orders for Kettlebells to Canada, using UPS Standard
service. UPS Standard to Canada service is
IMPORTANT — International shipping quotes &
orders do not include customs clearance, duties,
taxes or other non-routine customs brokerage
charges, which are the responsibility of the
customer.
$450.00
$181.00
$287.00
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• KETTLEBELLS ARE SHIPPED VIA UPS
GROUND SERVICE, UNLESS OTHERWISE REQUESTED.
• KETTLEBELLS RANGING IN SIZE FROM 4KG TO 24KG
CAN BE SHIPPED TO P.O. BOXES OR MILITARY
ADDDRESSES VIA THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE, BUT WE
REQUIRE PHYSICAL ADDDRESSES FOR UPS
DELIVERIES FOR THE 32KG AND 40KG KETTLEBELLS.
•
NO RUSH ORDERS ON KETTLEBELLS!
Order Dragon Door Kettlebells online:
dragondoor.com/shop-by-department/kettlebells/
Unleashing a Powerful Force:
Become a Leader in The World’s
Most Dynamic Exercise Method
Participants at Pavel’s Russian Kettlebell Certifications include world champions, elite athletes,
special forces, law enforcement, firemen, doctors, personal trainers, martial artists...and regular
folk just looking to achieve irregularly spectacular levels of strength and conditioning.
The Party is On. The Party is Growing.
We invite you to ride the wave.
Go to www.dragondoor.com/workshops today and sign on!
Participants at Pavel’s September 2010 Chicago RKC workshop
Participants at Pavel’s St. Paul HKC workshop
Register for RKC Workshops online:
www.dragondoor.com/Workshops
Need Help Solving Your
Current Fitness Challenges?
Why Choosing a Dragon Door-Certified Kettlebell Instructor
Can Save You Frustration, Money and Time—While Ensuring
You Achieve Your Key Goals for Weight Loss, Strength,
Conditioning and Athletic Performance…
C
hoose a poorly-trained
kettlebell instructor—and
you risk not only the
chance of severe injury,
but risk failing to achieve the
results you are looking for. As the
company that launched the modern
kettlebell movement in 2001 and
introduced the world’s first-ever
kettlebell instructor certification
course, Dragon Door insists on the
highest standards for our certified
instructors. Only an average of 70%
of our candidates pass Dragon
Door’s highly challenging
certification standards and all
instructors are required to recertify
every two years.
As the demand for kettlebells and
kettlebell training grows, many
unqualified trainers have begun to
advertise their services as
kettlebell instructors. But beware,
kettlebell instruction requires an
extensive background and training
to be truly safe and effective.
Don’t risk injury or waste time with
subpar instruction when you can
take advantage of Pavel and
Dragon Door’s growing, worldwide
network of highly qualified RKC
certified kettlebell instructors.
Our RKC kettlebell instructors have
undergone the world’s most
rigorous of kettlebell instructor
certification courses and are fully
qualified to help you meet and
surpass your goals, be they fat loss,
strength and power development—
or athletic success.
When you choose a Dragon Doorcertified kettlebell instructor, you
can be confident you will be in the
hands of a highly competent
professional who will do their
utmost to see you succeed in your
personal fitness goals.
When you want results—using
kettlebells—it always pays to invest
in the best!
www.dragondoor.com
/instructors/rkc_instructors/
Visit today:
How to stay informed of the latest
advances in strength and conditioning
Visit http://kbforum.dragondoor.com/
Visit www.dragondoor.com for late-breaking news and tips on how to stay ahead of
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Visit http://kbforum.dragondoor.com/ and participate in Dragon Door’s stimulating
and informative Strength and Conditioning Forum. Post your fitness questions or comments and get quick feedback from Pavel Tsatsouline and other leading fitness experts.
Visit www.dragondoor.com and browse the Articles section and other pages for
groundbreaking theories and products for improving your health and well being.
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