A Tale of Two Exercises

I've been reading strength coaches Don John and Pavel's book, Easy Strength: How to Get a Lot Stronger than Your Competition. As a TOJ, I don't worry to much about my competition (what competition?), but books like this usually have some something relevant to fitness that's worth learning. John and Pavel (of Russian kettelbell fame) targeted this book towards strength training for performance-focused athletes and sometimes it really gets pedantic, like whether it's better to do weight lifting with laddering sets of 10, 8, 6, 4 or 4, 6, 8, 10. Answer: Who knows?

That said, it's a good read with some useful information. John and Pavel take turns offering their experienced advice and insights on various aspects of weight training. I found Pavel's especially interesting because he cites the work of several top Russian exercise physiologists whose work had been concealed for decades, like nuclear secrets, behind the Iron Curtain. For decades, the Russians dominated Olympic weight-lifting because they developed unique approaches to building strength and power, including plyometrics and the kettlebell.

Ironically, Pavel gives credit to a Danish researcher who recently discovered a different approach to kettlebell training called "overspeed eccentric kettlebell swings and snatches." Looking for an innovative way to use kettelbells in cardiovascular training, the researcher discovered that if you take a lighter kettlebell than you normally workout with and intentionally accelerate it during the descending part of the technique (sort of like you are hiking a football), generating a large momentum, then explosively pull it back up using your feet, arms, and lock out of the hips, with just 4 sets of 10 reps you get performance improvements in all kinds of other exercises like squats, jumps, lunges, and even agility and throwing. The point is, a lighter kettlebell (Russians pride themselves on heavy ones) swung at a higher speed produces benefits throughout your entire body (your kinetic chain) from head to toe.

Because the horn (loop) of the kettlebell will roll harder in your hand, Pavel even passes along a very simple suggestion by an American kettlebell coach to avoid wrecking your hands by ripping the calluses on your palm. Just take a sock and cut off a few inches of the elastic tube and pull it over your hand. The sock lets the kettlebell move as needed and provides both protection for, and adequate control with your fingers.

See what it looks like in the picture below. (I could still cut off another inch or so.) It works great! I expect some American entrepreneur to start selling Kettlebell Sleeves in neon colors any time.

And speaking of exercise, watch this video, posted by Facebook friend Don Andrew. It shows George Hood setting a Guinness World Record for holding an abdominal plank for OVER TWO HOURS!

Today the Super Bowl is on TV.  Some great athletes will perform. I'm not sure who to bet on. But I would bet that none of the players who set foot on the field could pull off  the feat of strength and endurance accomplished by this 54 year old. A true TOJ!

Zen and the Art of Physical Training

Once I heard a cool Zen story. A newbie was trying to learn the art of archery under the harsh guidance of a Master archer. The Japanese bow is very stiff and takes a lot of strength to bend then hold on the target. Master archers make it look completely natural and relaxed, but it takes years of training to just let the arrow fly to the target.

The newbie was trying so hard to hit the target that he was holding his breath. Huffing and puffing and his arms wobbly, he couldn't aim and his arrows were flying all over the place.

One day the master, who had been watching the newbie struggle for weeks, approached and told him to stop. The Master then moved the target and placed it just a few feet in front of the newbie.

"There, you can't miss the target," said the Master. "Now you can concentrate on learning to shoot the bow."

Many exercisers are like the Zen newbie, including trainers and coaches. Exercise books, magazines, and blogs are loaded with  instructions to set goals, quantify, measure, list, be obsessed with outcomes, but there are other, maybe more effective, ways to get stronger or run longer, and enjoy training for an event or just maintaining your fitness. Too often reaching for physical goals set us back and, in the worst cases, cause injuries.

Read this provocative post by Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Body. The training secrets of a U.S. soldier named Victor are fascinating and appropriate for TOJs of all ages.

Kettlebells: From Russia With Love and Macho

A few weeks ago I got a 35 lb. kettlebell. Not one to go to gyms often in the past twenty years, I had never heard of kettlebells until about at year ago, although they've been used in Russia for several hundred years. It's been a happy discovery for this TOJ.

A kettlebell workout is challenging, but very effective and simple. It takes some getting used to because the exercises are ballistic, required you to swing a heavy weight, and involve your total body. But I do think they are superior in many ways to barbells and dumbbells that focus on isolated muscle groups. When I finish a workout, I feel a relaxed fatigue from my shoulders to my feet. And I think they are making me stronger.

When my children were little kids, we had book of Russian fairy tales, all based on animal stories. What was different than those tales and, say, "The Three Bears," was that they all had unhappy endings. They were cautionary tales of animals with human foibles, which would eventually end with the hero of the story being eaten by another animal or freezing to death. I remember thinking that being raised in a culture like this would make for a tough adult.

In the days of the Soviet Union, the Russian athletic establishment was the embodiment of this Spartan view of life. They were notorious for grueling workouts, harsh training conditions, and applying science to "manufacturing" great athletes. And they did. The Soviets were always top medal winners in the winter and summer Olympics.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire back in the 1980's, the Russian Army and US Special Forces started training under the guidance of Pavel Tsatouline, a Russian solider and conditioning coach. To our embarrassment, the Russian soldiers exhibited better strength and endurance than our soldiers. The former trained almost exclusively with kettlebells.

In Russia, kettlebells, used for centuries as counter-weights in farm commerce, were already widely used by soldiers, athletes, farmers and workers to develop and display their strength. Most Russians have always been relatively poor, certainly not able to pay a monthly fee to workout on the Nautilus. So kettlebells kept them strong.

A born entrepreneur, Tsatouline, now Pavel, Inc., found a tremendous opportunity in obese, exercise-starved America, and has created a whole kettlebell franchise with the weights, books, DVDs and trainer certification. There are hundreds of imitators, but he is a credible source regarding how to train with a kettlebell.

His books, though full of solid exercise physiology, can be sort of funny because they are riddled with military macho. Weightlifters are referred to as warriors. He describes the fat-burning aspects of the kettleball as superior to the "dishonor of diet and aerobic exercise." (He reminds me of the testosterone-hyped writers in Men's Health magazine; don't know why the weight-lifter types have such a visceral reaction to skinny marathoners!)

However, Pavel is a master of the kettlebell, which requires a lot of technique to get the benefits and avoid injury. Working out with a kettleball is demanding and different to what I was used to with conventional weights. You use your core muscles to lift and balance a large, unstable (because of the handle) weight overhead with your arm locked. It's important to keep the wrist relatively straight, which can be hard if you do not control the kettlebell well enough to avoid slamming it against your wrist (it hurts!).

You will find tons of video about the kettleball on YouTube, including some that show incredibly strong Russians flipping them around like jugglers. However, be careful because some of the demonstrator in the videos display poor technique.

I plan to incorporate a kettlebell workout at least twice a week. There's no doubt it maximizes overall functional strength, stability, flexibility, and balance. It's perfect if you only have 30 minutes to exercise because in that time you can reach complete muscle exhaustion if you keep rests short between sets.

Now when I think of Russia, I don't think vodka, caviar, Baryshnikov, Tolstoy or Siberia. I think kettlebells.