Kettlebells for Beginners

Photo courtesy of Coach Ron Jones, KBLA RKC

If you've decided to start training with kettlebells and devote time to experiencing the improvements that they can offer you, you'll need to actually get your hands on some kettlebells! BUT WHICH ONES?!?

Here's my personal guideline. 

Because the most fundamental exercises in kettlebell training are the Swing & the Turkish Get-Up, I strongly suggest having two different kettlebells. If you're thinking that having to shell out the money for two kettlebells is expensive, let me tell you that coming to see a doctor or therapist after you injure yourself trying to be a badarse with horribly compensated technique is much more expensive. 

Invest on the front end, reap on the back end. Skimp on the front end, pay terribly on the back end.

The lighter kettlebell will allow you to learn the Turkish Get-Up with a weight that should allow you to be challenged safely without being too stressed to pay attention to good form. It will also allow you to make tweaks to your Swing form without great risk of injury to yourself. 

Men - You'll ideally need both a 12kg (26lb) kettlebell and a 20kg (44lb) kettlebell. I know, I know, I know... You bench press with 5 plates on each side & can squat with a buffalo on your back. I don't care. The Swing & Turkish Get-Up CAN be done as strength movements, but finesse and technique are primary concerns in the RKC method - NOT brute strength. Remember that every point of technique you overlook will come back to haunt you eventually. Trust me on that.

Ladies - You'll ideally need both a 14lb kettlebell and a 16kg (35lb) kettlebell.

Now if you're one of those folks who's ridiculously strong, coordinated, and un-injured, you can certainly err towards the larger sized kettlebells. As long as you can maintain correct form on BOTH sides for Pavel's Program Minimum, which I believe he goes over in Enter the Kettlebell, use whatever sized bell you want. Remember that the sizes I mentioned in this post are nothing more than general guidelines for the average male & female based on my experiences in teaching around the world. 

Remember, too, that NOTHING takes the place of working on the above exercises with a skilled instructor, not just a skilled athlete! 

Proprioception is Sexy - RKC Snatch Test Preparation & other Sports Performance applications

It never fails. Regardless of the field of endeavor, there's always someone with a serious disconnect between reality and actuality. Like the word proprioception. Would you think that something so nerdy could be sexy?

Let's look at how that works with movement, for example. If you've ever lifted a weight overhead as an adult, the odds are pretty good that when you thought you achieved the lockout position, you probably were a bit shy of straight at the elbow. Nonetheless, you were probably dead sure that you'd locked out that elbow and pressed or snatched that heavy weight to a perfect apex.

Sorry to break this to you, but you might've missed the lockout.

If you've ever done the RKC Snatch Test and heard the words "No count!", that could've very well happened because of an incomplete lockout. Yeah, I know you're sure. I know you've never had a no-count doing the snatch test at home. I know your form is perfect.... when YOU'RE THE JUDGE!

Subjectivity is the primary means of enabling the self towards failure. And as the legendary Functional Movement Screen founder Gray Cook says, "We all need systems to protect us from our own subjectivity." So the system that we need to refine is that which gives us feedback as to whether or not we're really moving the way we think we're moving and takes away our ability to argue defensively like bratty little children.

Proprioception is the ability to distinguish where one part of the body is in relation to another. We develop that ability somewhat as children during the growth process. In the years from newborn to childhood, you developed the ability to go from randomly poking yourself in the eye to picking that booger out with surgical precision. But with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles (and even in grade school since physical education programs got the ax years ago), proprioceptive deficits are building up faster than fat on the waistlines of American youth.

And as a result, you get to hear about proprioception from me. But here's the good part... Proprioception IS sexy!

Good proprioception affords you two very big advantages.
1. Accuracy in movement - which means that you very likely execute very precise, very controlled, very graceful, and very efficient movements. If you have great awareness of your own movement, then when your nervous system tells you that you locked out, then you REALLY did lock out. If your body is telling you that you locked out your back leg on that stance, then your Sifu likely agrees with you too. If your nervous system is masterfully in control of your body's movement, then that fadeaway jumpshot that you launched from 3-point land has a much higher likelihood of creating that sweet sound of nothing-but-net. That makes you not only a better athlete, but a more attractive specimen as well. Not to rip on bodybuilders, but you could be the most buff dude on the beach & unable to tuck your own shirt in.

2. Reduced injury rates - make everybody happier, except your competition. Someone with great proprioception can push harder on the field or in battle and get more out of his or her body. Someone with terrible proprioception will push hard and either waste move clumsily & get hurt or lurch like a car with the parking brakes on and create repetitive motion injury.

So for those of you who want to come to the RKC, I encourage you to find the strictest feedback mechanism that you can find (like a combination of Flip video & a solidly qualified instructor) and apply it mercilessly towards yourself. Why? Because if you're allowed to lie to yourself, you probably will. And your reliance on faulty proprioception may cost you a rather pricey certification, airfare, & lodging (as well as a few days off from work and wickedly sore muscles).

On the other hand, if you use this blogpost as a call to really invest the effort into re-calibrating your proprioception, you'll find that you not only perform better under pressure, but do so with less effort, more grace, and a decreased likelihood of injury.

If you're not interested in the RKC, no problem. But you STILL have to deal with the reality of your own movement patterns and develop a REAL awareness of them. As I often tell my students in martial arts, kettlebells, or any other form of movement, if I tell you to do something such as straightening your leg, and you think you're already straightening your leg, try to straighten it a little more anyways. If your leg moves, then you didn't have it as straight as you could have. And then that little bit of movement should humble you enough to self-check more & more and develop sharper & sharper awareness of your body and your control over it.

Don't wait until life takes away all your compensations before you take the time to self-check your perceptions against unflinching reality.

It's been long overdue

Ladies & Gentlemen, I'm the first person to admit it...

I've fallen way short of my own expectations for this blog and for my own websites, especially www.kettlebellslosangeles.com.

So to remedy that, like any responsible person should do with a problem that's beyond their management capabilities, I'm seeking out professional help.

I have a whole slew of domain names that I've reserved, and I want to spend the next few months populating the vast majority of them so that I can start using them to get more information out and to increase my productivity.

Soon, I'll be launching my new portal website, which will hold a whole slew of links to my other websites. Those other websites will include everything from compendiums of my articles for different martial arts magazines, to information on the different Chinese medicine modalities that I practice, to my particular insights on Russian kettlebell training, to the different styles of martial arts that I practice and/or teach.

You've been incredibly patient as I've been traveling all over creation and not blogging or posting anywhere near as much as I'd like to. And if all goes well, I won't have to give the FMS company line of "2 more weeks" as a nebulous deadline of when this portal will be ready to open.

While it may not always seem like it, I hear you very clearly when you ask me for insights, for help, for solutions. And I am going to make sure that starting in 2011, you get the best I have to offer through the best of the world wide web's technologies.

Keep on me, keep pushing me, keep supporting me, and keep growing with me! And if you have some thoughts on how I can get my online presence sorted out sooner and smoother, please shoot me an e-mail at kettlebellsla@yahoo.com!

The LA Times & Yahoo News Jillian Michaels Kettlebell Controversy

Just in case you've been lucky enough to be off the grid for a while, let me fill you in.

Not too long ago, I was contacted by James Fell, a fitness writer for the Los Angeles Times, to speak on a new kettlebell DVD featuring The Biggest Loser star, Jillian Michaels.

To say that I had a few issues with the quality of her instruction was to put it rather lightly. Then again, my situation is a little unique. My very first exposure to kettlebell training was directly from the man who essentially revived the use of the ancient Slavic strength training device, Pavel Tsatsouline himself. The VAST majority of what I've learned about the use of kettlebells and strength training comes directly from time spent directly under Tsatsouline's tutelage.

And as someone who makes his living as a health care professional dealing primarily with musculoskeletal pain, I see plenty of people who come into my clinic with injuries sustained while "exercising" or "training" or "working out". That's why I think so highly of the Functional Movement Systems information that's taught by another of my mentors, Gray Cook.

Cook's teachings echoed the same emphasis on disciplined movement that I'd grown up with in traditional martial arts. Moving in a sloppy fashion for the sake of exercise is just a precursor to "repetitive motion injury", a.k.a. "non-contact injury", a.k.a. "weekend warrior syndrome". The names are many, but the outcome is simple = PAIN.

With that in mind, it's not hard to see why I'm a stickler for details in movement, especially in teaching movement for the sake of exercise. If you try and muscle someone around in a combat situation instead of relying on well-developed finesse, you'd better be damn strong, or else you're going to be injured rather often. If you try and muscle around a weight, especially without the guidance of a qualified instructor, your likelihood of injury just went through the roof.

So as much as I'd prefer to be diplomatic and not ruffle any feathers, there's the small issue of integrity that I had to deal with. As much as it might benefit my bottom line, I don't like seeing my patients over and over again for the same or similar pains or injuries. If I do, that means that there's something I'm not doing right or addressing completely. It's a horrible business model, I know, but I'm the one who has to be able to sleep peacefully at night. Thus, I felt compelled to speak honestly about what I saw Ms. Michaels teaching as far as her movements and the safety of her kettlebell technique.

Mr. Fell quoted me accurately, even if he didn't name me or Kettlebells Los Angeles accurately (...Who the heck is "Dave" from "Kettle Bells Los Angeles"?). The words I spoke voicing my concerns about Ms. Michaels's teaching methods & technique were reproduced word for word.

So shortly after the article hit the net, the buzz started happening surprisingly fast. Here's the link to the original LA Times piece... fortunately with the correction to my name printed as a sidebar...
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/homeentertainment/la-he-fitness-jillian-michaels-20101011,0,5152686.story


And just today, the Yahoo! TV Blog posted a story about this as well, thankfully with my correct name.
http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/health-experts-call-foul-on-jillian-michaels-regimen--1642

Some folks are interpreting what I've said as a personal attack on Jillian Michaels. The truth is that as much as I appreciate what she's doing as a motivator, I think she needs to learn more about what's at stake with biomechanical errors like the ones she's propagating. As well-intentioned as she may be, that's no excuse for taking the persuasive power she wields and treating it carelessly.

Whether she gets her RKC, her HKC, or whatever other internationally recognized kettlebell instructor certification that's solidly recognized by kettlebell experts the world over, I'd hope that she'd be conscientious enough to invest the time & sincere effort to learn the safest & most effective means of training with kettlebells that she can find.... not the easiest, not the most streamlined, not a few lessons.... before putting out an instructional DVD that will be used by thousands of people in the hopes of getting in shape.

The bottom line to me is this, as I posted on my Facebook page under the link:

"Folks, let's call it the way it is. I'm not out to get Jillian, and I'm glad that so many people see her as a motivator to get healthier. Rather, I'm out to make sure that we're not "adding fitness to dysfunction". We all need to go back to... what my mentor, Gray Cook, outlines as priorities: "Move well, then move often." Tons of reps that don't observe strict form are enabling movement patterns that are counterproductive and potentially injurious in the long run. Exercise professionals need to hold themselves to a higher standard, even if the industry or the public doesn't."

Functional Movement Systems & Hard Style Kettlebells Workshop in San Clemente

If you ever wanted to see, feel, and learn Gray Cook's FMS screen and Pavel Tsatsouline's Hard Style kettlebell training method and you live between Orange County and San Diego, here's your best, easiest, and cheapest opportunity!

*Has pain been pissing you off?
*Has your training plateaued?
*Do you want more out of your life, your training, your movement, and your quality of life?

I'll PERSONALLY be teaching down in San Clemente next weekend at the elite studio of Valerie Waldron, RKC. We've extended an early bird discount (just $50) until Monday, August 2, just before midnight. After then, the price goes up to $75... still a steal for 4 hours of some of the most mindblowing training you're sure to get.

To register, please click here! - https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=YHYMDQPWL8ARL

For the USMC stationed at Camp Pendleton, it'll stay at $50 regardless of when you register. Please use THIS link - https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=B2JJ8XAY2CPDS

If you're with USMC 1st ANGLICO, e-mail me directly at kettlebellsla@yahoo.com for an even better registration special.

Some of the concepts we will cover are:


- Foot mechanics: Is your foot killing the rest of your body?

- Hip mobility: The hip is a bad neighbor!

- The Hard Style Lock: The importance of tactile cueing in effective instruction

- Breath & the Neck: The gateway to internal work and external structure

- Primitive Patterns: I've fallen & I can't get up!

- Lats: Reflexive Shoulder Stability

- Half-Kneeling & Back Pain: Are your Quads punishing your back?

- Goblet Squat: Reversing the damage of desk jockey life!

 
It's open to the public, and it'll be on Saturday, August 7th from 12-4pm.

PACIFIC STRENGTH
KETTLEBELL & PERSONAL TRAINING STUDIO
154 Avenida Victoria
San Clemente, CA 92672
www.pacstrength.com

949.291.6093

SEE YOU THERE!

Is Lower Back Pain Tying a Knot in Your Movement - Joint Mobility vs Stability vs Power

It's been a while since I've had a chance to blog about little more than letting you know that I'm in or out of town or announcing some other random developments in the RKC or FMS worlds.

While those two things are always happening (and as I head out of town tomorrow for Danville, VA to see my mentor - Gray Cook), ideal training ISN'T always happening.

For some reason, there's a whole slew of people that think that as long as they buy the next cool tool or shiny, new toy, they'll get better performance out of their bodies....as if simply having the new kettlebell or TRX technology under your roof will osmotically make you a better athlete or decrease your pain or help you lose the stubborn fat around your midsection... as if simply buying the highest quality nutritional supplements like Shakeology without regularly using them will dramatically transform your state of health.

WHO ARE YOU KIDDING OTHER THAN YOURSELF?

Higher reps with heavier weight DOES NOT necessarily mean that you're moving better.

And now for the smasher...

Moving without pain DOES NOT necesssarily mean that you're moving better either!

Moving WELL, with biomechanically advantageous patterns REFLEXIVELY and without pain, means that you're moving better. Once you've established that as your BASELINE, then adding sets & reps makes for a better, stronger, more sound body.

That said, what's one of the easiest ways for you to trash your body (aside from picking a fight with an angry Beast)?

Let's make it an even easier question. Suppose the human body's like a car (not that I know jack$h!t about cars). Let's think of what we might do to destroy a car without actually crashing it into something deliberately. There are 2 main ways of destroying a car in a non-contact fashion:

1. operating the car when the fluid levels are far too low, or
2. driving the car too rough when there is some mechanical impediment.

Operating the car when the fluid levels are too low is an obvious one. Start driving in a car without brake fluid, with a leaking radiator, or without sufficient motor oil. Breakdown is imminent. It's not a question of if, but when the car will seize up either in rush hour traffic, or while you're speeding down the interstate.

No, that ain't my car!

Driving the car with a mechanical impediment goes back to what Pavel calls "driving with the parking brake on". I think we've all done it at some point or another, but the hard part is to realize BEFORE we put the car into drive that the brake is still on. For some of us, that takes a long time. We fumble about with recurrent injuries that seem to get better and then get reaggravated.

The lower back is a common site of pain, injury, reinjury, and eventually debility for some. Now while it's easy to focus on alleviating the pain at its most painful location, the "brakes" might still be locked down elsewhere in the vehicle.

Studies have shown a high correlation between hip movement dysfunction and lower back pain. So let's think about this by defining 3 terms and seeing how they might apply in lower back rehab:
- Mobility is the unfettered ability to move a joint through an optimal range of motion without pain.
- Stability is the ability to hold a joint in a given position or shortened range of motion.
- Power is the ability to recruit muscular contraction for the purpose of bearing or moving a load through a given range of motion.

There are many ways of approaching the hip dysfunction, which is paining the lower back.
1. You can stretch or treat the living hell out of the lower back in an attempt to "decompress" and restore range of motion. This is focusing on mobility at the site of pain.
2. You can do crunches and ab exercises until the cows come home in order to create more stability for the lumbar spine.
3. Or you can try to power your way through to hip extension by clenching your glutes so hard that even Jean-Claude Van Damme would be jealous.

Looks like pretty mobile hips to me, but what are we missing?

Gray Cook's mantra has always been to focus on mobility FIRST. But sometimes, trying to pry movement out of a stuck joint without taking the brakes off first is easier said than done.

The trick is sometimes to encourage the reflexive action of the weakened "accelerator" muscles while simultaneously training the hyperactive "parking brake" muscles to turn off. In this case, that would mean strengthening hip extensors, such as the glutes, while stretching hip flexors, such as the psoas, iliacus, and rectus femoris.

Pavel's long been too kind in complementing me publicly on my form with the Front Squat, and it's something I never really paid attention to until after he had me demonstrating some sort of horse stance drill at the Feb 2010 RKC II. I couldn't appreciate the drill at the time, and I'm still investigating its worth from a movement quality standpoint, but the Boss's comments still made me question what I'd been missing.

While teaching the RKC Squat back here in Los Angeles, I felt like my own form wasn't the same as what it was when I first started training with kettlebells. Keeping in mind the most common mistakes in the Front Squat (i.e., lumbar flexion, valgus collapse, etc.), I started looking at ways of optimizing necessary attributes for this particular movement pattern.

What I came up with revolved around this...

Yup... old-school Shaolin & Tai-Chi stance training. Just as with any field of endeavor, there are tons of ways to execute/perform anything. Sure, there are plenty of different versions of the horse stance floating around, and in my own martial arts studies, I've seen, learned, and taught more than one variation myself. But this isn't the time or place to get dogmatic, especially if you're not clear on context.

The earliest version of the horse stance that my father taught me revolved around achieving vertical alignment from the midfoot, the hip, the shoulder, and the center of the head when viewed from the side. When viewed from the front, this stance was referred to in Cantonese as "sei ping ma bo", meaning "four levels horse stance". The four levels referred to 4 perpendicular lines, as formed by the two lines from the knees to feet, and the lines from knee-to-knee & foot-to-foot.

To perform this stance correctly, the aforementioned alignments of leg and of spine must be achieved and maintained. But to achieve these alignments requires simultaneous mobility of the anterior portion of the hip joint with stability coming from the drive of the glutes in the posterior chain. Instead of doing the movement in strict Shaolin format, I took a modified version of it and drilled my students on it one Sunday morning.

Without exception, each one of them was shaking, sweating, and swearing while I had them perform very subtle movements, adjusting them slowly, yet thoroughly into the essential points of the stance. But at the finish of the exercise, everyone reported not only better hip mobility, but also a marked decrease in lower back stiffness.

Just as a knot is only as useful as it is secure under pressure and moveable enough to untie when offloading, the lumbar spine and hips must also be able to reflexively stabilize under load while able to move under load to create powerful movement. With the hip flexors and quads unbound enough to take the parking brakes off while the posterior chain keeps driving the pelvis forward, the entire spine can remain in neutral under a relaxed neck and a tall chest.

Wanna see & experience more of this and other correctives in high-detail? Get to Hard Style Ventura in November! In the meantime, read & re-read this post for the little details that can make or break your hips & back!

I know... I know... Updates are coming soon

And they'll be well worth the wait, folks.

I know I've been more than a bit lax with blog updates. While I can join the rest of the crowd and blame it all on my new microblogging habits on Facebook & Twitter, the reality is that I've been hauling a$$ all over creation like a Chinaman with a burning rickshaw.

What have I been working on?

Aside from a plethora of changes in my personal life, my current area of deep investigation is centered around the FMS mobility correctives. One of Gray Cook's constant exhortations is "mobility FIRST". Yet many of us are far too quick to assume that we're moving just fine and fast forward ourselves to strenuous exercise, such as strength training.

I used to think that exercises like high kicks would cause the body to reactivate lost mobility. Unfortunately, the reality is often otherwise. If joints necessary for achieving the high kick (such as the hip joint) are compromised in their mobility, your body's going to borrow mobility from somewhere else that isn't supposed to move in the manner that it's being forced to.

Say for example your hip is a little locked up, guess what's going to have to do double duty to get your foot up that high. Most likely, your lower back will be paying the price the day afterwards, and your hamstrings will be so full of microtrauma that you'll be walking around like mummy instead of martial artist.

What other areas, aside from the hip, are crucial for performance?

While Functional Movement Systems talks about the lumbar spine being stable, the thoracic spine being mobile, and the cervical spine being stable, ALL joints need to START with MOBILITY. Stability has to be reflexive, not immutable. So if you heard the joint-by-joint approach and confused "rigidity" for reflexive stability, you probably either ran into limits with performance or just got hurt.

For me, inadequate mobility in certain ranges of motion in my hips, lumbar spine, and neck have caused me to compensate in countless ways over the years. Even as a child, I was ridiculously stiff. By 9 years old, I was unable to touch my toes. So martial arts training helped me to regain some of the lost mobility.

However, without regular practice of some of the fundamental exercises that were much less appealing than the combat skills development, my body merely learned to compensate its way through the movements and training. So as you heard me say in a previous blogpost, I've been going back to the basics, relearning how to move well in ranges that I've not moved through in decades and investing the time & resources to get therapy & treatment to deal with adhesions & locked up joints.

OK... back to work now. More later, and rest assured that it'll be worth the wait! :)