Hey hey
Did you ever wonder how that rumor got started that I never wear a shirt? Well it was started by this guy Dan Cenidoza. About a year and a half back a bunch of us RKC’s had started gabbing about trying to do a bulk order of Kettlebells to help save on shipping. This was my chance to order the Beast and not pay a butt load in shipping expenses but it also meant I had to drive all the way down to Balitimore Maryland in order to pick it up. If you haven’t seen the video where I attempted to do a Beast Getup right out of the box here it is and Dan Cenidoza was the one holding the camera and is also the one who said “Comrade please do not drop the kettlebell on your head”, in an impersonation of Pavel…that’s something anyone who picks up a kettlebell does btw.
It was also his idea for me to put it overhead and me with a couple drinks in me was very open to bad ideas. Hey his strength is contagious since prior to this video he was actually pulling chains apart with his hands. How could I not attempt to put it overhead? He brought this box of goodies in which included a bunch of different Captain’s of Crush grippers. I picked out the number 3 gripper squeezed it and started laughing because the thing was so impossible.
It wasn’t impossible because he was able to close it. He’s on their wall of fame and he’s also noted for several other things. I didn’t realize just how many until I went to his RKC page to snag his phone number in case I needed to call him about something en route. Here are a couple things he’s noted for.
EDUCATION
2004 : NSCA-Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist
2005 : Towson University – BS, Exercise Science
2006 : RKC Kettlebell Certification
2007 : AKC Kettlebell Certification
2008 : CK-FMS Functional Movement CertificationWORK EXPERIENCE
2003 : Personal Training
2004 : Founded Be-More Training, LLC
2005 : Fitness Instructor; Community Colleges of Baltimore County
2006 : Strength Coach; Baltimore County Public Schools
2006 : Senior Fitness Specialist; Erickson Retirement Communities
2007 : Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach; Baltimore Ravens
2007 : Founded Baltimore Kettlebell Club, LLC
2010 : Assistant Instructor Philadelphia RKCPERFORMANCES, DEMONSTRATIONS & SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
2005 : Night of Strength II
2006 : Night of Strength III
2006 : Pennsylvania State Strength & Conditioning Clinic
2007 : Association of Oldetime Barbell & Strongman dinner
2007 : Pennsylvania State Strength & Conditioning Clinic
2008 : St. Ursula Health Fair (Boy Scout Troop no 343)
2008 : Pennsylvania State Strength & Conditioning Clinic
2009 : Fox 45 Morning News
2009 : Family Fitness Night
2009 : Pennsylvania State Strength & Conditioning Clinic
2009 : Family Fun Day (C.R.E.A.T.E. Everyday Geniuses)
2009 : ABC 2 News Good Morning Maryland
2010 : Pennsylvania State Strength & Conditioning Clinic
2010 : Family Fun Day (C.R.E.A.T.E. Everyday Geniuses)
2010 : Kettlebells for Warriors (York Barbell)
2010 : Southwest Airlines Employee Expo
2010 : Association of Oldtime Barbell & Strongman dinnerCONTEST HISTORY
2003 : Fall Strongman Challenge (4th)
2004 : Mid-Atlantic Strongman Contest (3rd)
2004 : Maryland’s Strongest Man (2nd)
2004 : Global Grip Challenge (6th)
2005 : Mid-Atlantic Strongman Contest (1st)
2005 : Maryland’s Strongest Man (2st)
2005 : Global Grip Challenge (6th)
2005 : Anne Arundel Highland Games (1st B-class)
2006 : Mid-Atlantic Strongman Contest (2nd)
2006 : Tactical Strength Challenge (6th Men’s open)
2006 : Maryland’s Strongest Man (2nd)
2007 : Mid-Atlantic Strongman Contest (3rd)
2007 : Maryland’s Strongest Man (1st)
2007 : Tactical Strength Challenge (2nd Men’s elite)
2008 : Feats of Strength Contest (1st)
2008 : Mid-Atlantic Strongman Contest (5th)
2008 : Maryland’s Strongest Man (4th)PERSONAL RECORDS
Powerlifts:
585 deadlift
405 squatKettlebells:
Single hand snatch – 24kg x 150
5 min snatch test – 24kg x 132, 32kg x 93
10 min snatch test – 24kg x 203Strongman:
Farmers walk – 660lb x 20yds
Axle C&P – 250lb x 2
Atlas stones – 331 x 50″Bodyweight:
Pull ups – 15 (225)
Push ups – 40 (225)
5k run – 26:30 (225)
10mi run – 2:04:01 (235)Grip Feats:
#3 COC Gripper
IM Red Nail
50lb YORK Blob
Phonebooks & cards
Horseshoes, wrenches & frying pans
Now I cornered Dan and threatened to beat him up if he didn’t answer my questions in an orderly fashion…just kidding I asked him nicely on facebook for this interview and he agreed to it.
How did you get involved with strength training?
Initially I got involved as a teenager. My dad is a life long martial artist and we’ve had weights, punching bags and hand grippers for as long as I can remember. I worked out on and off throughout middle and high school but nothing with any real consistency.
Yeah I actually seem to remember you talking about stopping a fight just by grabbing him and hinting at the power you possess. That’s pretty cool btw. So what made you want to start strength training?
I got tired of being fat. I was about 2 years out of highschool when I got a stretch mark on my stomach. At 6′ 1″ I was an untrained 245lbs and didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. That’s when casual workouts stopped and training started. I made a goal to never stop working out. At first I was about bodybuilding, then powerlifting and weightlifting and then when grip became the weak link in my pulls I got involved in grip training and strongman. Somewhere along the line I simply became an enthusiast of all forms of strength.
From what I can tell you excel in all forms of strength.
Who have been your biggest influences?
Arthur Jones really had an impact on my training early on and got me training harder instead of longer. I think everyone should read his Nautilus Bulletins at least once. Brooks Kubik got me started thinking “outside of the gym” with odd object lifting, thick bars and the like. I think Dinosaur Training is where I learned about the Captians of Crush grippers. Mark Keshishian, Graham Bartholemew and the “Garage Gang” all influenced my training as a competitive strongman. Mark was the judge for my #3 gripper certification and had a “strongman playground” in his yard. Graham was the American Strongman Association state chairman for MD and we had some serious training sessions in his garage over the years. Steve Justa’s “Rock Iron Steel” got me thinking about work and labor as training, and something that could be done day in and day out. Pavel introduced me to kettlebells and the RKC has been very influential shaping me as a trainer. Dennis Rogers taught me how to become a performing strongman, and The Mighty Atom and Slim The Hammerman have both been inspirations to do so.
The things those guys do are incredible. Holding planes back, bending stuff that wasn’t meant to be bent. It’s an unbelievable form of entertainment that I am very happy to witness just because it’s so darn cool. I know for me the study of strongman type stuff started with the kettlebell which I just happened to bump into in a bookstore one day after someone had shown me one. How did you find your way to using kettlebells?
I came across an article by some Russian military guy in a muscle mag. He was talking about kettlebells, one leg squats and rope climbing. Shortly after I met the author at the Arnold in 2003 and got a much more thorough explanation of how and why. I had it in my head to buy a set but hadn’t figured out how to justify another several hundred dollars worth of equipment to my wife. Then we went to the AOBS dinner and saw a demonstration by Max Kettlebells. After the demo, my wife said she wanted a kettlebell for her birthday. We had a complete set by the end of the week.
Am I thinking the same bald Russian guy?
If you are thinking of Pavel, yes
Seems there is a lot of that going around amongst strong dudes. I had read about something called muscle control and for whatever reason you keep popping up whenever I do a bit o research about it. Can you tell us a little bit about muscle control?
http://bemoretraining.blogspot.com/2010/04/muscle-control.html (excerpted from his website)
Muscle Control (MC) is the targeted action of specific muscles that are under your voluntary control. It is a series of isolated contractions usually performed as an isometric. In other words, it is the ability to flex individual muscles while keeping others relaxed.My first introduction to Muscle Control (MC) was when I stumbled across a picture of someone performing “the rope” an abdominal control where a stomach vacuum is held while the rectus abs (6 pack) is contracted. I was amazed that someone could differentiate between abdominal muscles and control them independently from one another. I had never seen any such thing and thought the guy performing it to be some “freak of nature.”That picture led me to a book entitled Muscle Control by a guy named Maxick. The quick and dirty on Maxick is that he was born in 1882 as a sickly child who was so weak he was unable to walk until the age of 5. Under the advice of the doctor and the enforcement of his parents, he spent most of his youth avoiding anything strenuous. In his desire to become stronger he crafted himself a dumbbell, which when his father found, he destroyed, not wanting his son to overexert himself. It was then when Maxick began developing his system of MC. For more information on Maxick or MC visit www.superstrengthbooks.com
I find muscle control to be difficult to really get down. As you saw when we were discussing this down in Baltimore I can contract my shoulder muscle…but not nearly with the intensity that you were recommending and not without it spilling over to other muscle groups. It’s something I still continue to work at. Any ideas where to go from there (I already read Maxick’s book)?
All I can say is to keep practicing. The deltoids are one of the hardest muscles to control in isolation. You might want to try doing muscle control after a shoulder workout. Do a few lateral or front raises and immediately try doing your controls then. Sometimes after working the muscle in a weighted movement it seems easier to contract it isometrically.
Hmmm. It always seemed to be something I only practiced when I was bored. Not normally “with” the training session. Perhaps I can get some cross innervation like Paul Anderson did by slow supersetting squats with good mornings. If you had to recommend one book for strength training what would it be?
That’s a tough one and my answer would probably be different depending on who was asking. I’m going to go with the Nautilus Bulletins though. I am tempted to say why I would recommend them but I’ll let people answer that themselves, after they’ve read them.
http://www.arthurjonesexercise.com/Bulletin1/Bulletin1.html
http://www.arthurjonesexercise.com/Bulletin2/Bulletin2.html
I definitely plan to read up on those if it means I get to break chains with my hands too What is your favorite feat of strength that you have done?
Probably either bending a #4 draft horseshoe or a triple phonebook tear.
That’s insane! Ok just one more…I used to joke about starting a heavy metal band called Steel Garden (well I actually do plan to start that up at some point, but this is what I would plant in the steel garden) but where on Earth did you get the idea for the Iron Bonsais?
John Brookfield. He used to sell them back in the day. I always wanted to get one but never had the money. When I did my first scroll, I knew instantly that I wanted to make them. I thought about other names but nothing sounded as cool Iron Bonsai. Instead of ripping Brookfield off like so many people do, I simply called the man and asked him if I could use the name. He thanked me for the respect and gave me his blessing. I’ve been making Iron Bonsai for a couple years now. I’ve always had an artistic side to me but never really did anything with it. These sculptures not only provide a creative outlet but make me stronger too.
Where art meets strength. Anyways I really appreciate this interview Dan and you gave a lot of high quality advice. I’m sure my readers will appreciate it too.
If you are in the Baltimore area and want to become strong and awesome I highly suggest you check him out at BeMoreTraining.com and IronBonsai.com
Well back to the story about how the rumor got started about me not wearing a shirt it was him and another dude named Joe Sansalone who said “I didn’t recognize you with your shirt on.” I just started laughing and ran with it. It’s funny because it’s true.
Not too long ago I had the rare opportunity to sit in on a seminar with the GREAT MMA star Fedor “the last emperor” Emelienenko. If you don’t know who that is that’s ok…because not a ton of people know mixed martial arts outside of UFC but that is besides the point. First let me give you a little bit of background about him. Up until recently he was essentially undefeated in around 30 something fights which in mixed martial arts is unheard of. He had shown no weakness discernible weaknesses including winning a fight right after being dropped on his head.
Well anyways getting the chance to sit in on a Fedor seminar isn’t something that very many people get to do so I jumped at the opportunity to learn from who I consider the best in the world. I mean mixed martial arts is a sport that demands the total fitness package. And my main take away from learning from him was when he said this…and I am paraphrasing here since it’s been about a year.
если есть то, что вы не очень хорошо нужно потратить много времени там.
Translated from Russian that means “If there is something you aren’t good at you need to spend a lot of time there.” People are often times drawn to things they are good at in the gym. You’ve seen the same people flock to the bench press on Monday (in fact it’s a running joke that Monday is international bench press day) and even though the bench press is a half way decent exercise they still have a ton of gaps in their training programs.
Leave your comfort zone if you want to improve
.
As you may have seen me say in a previous blog post about getting all the components of fitness it pays to specialize…but you shouldn’t leave gaps in your training program either. Get really good at a few highly productive exercises and train the others at a low level. By low level I like to include it as sort of either a warm up or an active recovery measure. Low enough where it tells your central nervous system…”Hey don’t build us up at the expense of this other exercise.” but high enough where your central nervous system says “but don’t forget about us either.” And to follow up on Fedor’s advice.
Specialize on your weaknesses to make them equal to your strengths.
So you can either do what you have always done, or you can improve. That part is up to you.
Well that’s it for today. Thank you for reading.
Physical awesomeness to you.
Eric Moss
"The Last Emperor" Fedor Emelianenko and me.
I am a fitness professional residing in Hopatcong, NJ, who is dedicated to making myself and my clients as strong as (or stronger than) they look and to look beyond sexy. I help my clients drop body fat quickly, gain strength quickly and I use kettlebells as my main tool and the RKC system as my main methodology. I am a personal trainer with small group personal training and fitness bootcamps in Morris and Sussex County NJ. This fitness blog is where I have become known as a straight shooter with a unique writing style and I have been known to force companies to take videos down where they teach unsafe and ineffective technique with just a couple written words. It has become an inside joke started by a guy that bends steel bars into bonsai tree shaped decorations with his hands, that I don’t wear shirts but that is mainly because I have built up my physique along the lines of a Greek statue and exhibit it proudly.
Are you progressing? Why not?
By · CommentsYou know I was going to write a rather lengthy blog post about how people need to be able to progress but I decided against it. I’ll just show you some of my clients progress so you know that I am not the only one putting up decent numbers. These are some of the people I train in my NJ Fitness Boot Camp where we usually don’t do anything BUT kettlebell training.
Why?
Because it works. The system works. Watch and see.
Notice how much Jill is laughing here. Do you think I run her into the ground? No. Lift heavy, stay fresh. That’s how you can become strong too. Also laughing can decrease the amount of cortisol (belly fat hormone). To put this into perspective Jill started with saying 17lbs and claiming it was heavy but now is able to press 44lbs. This is an increase in absolute strength by more then 200%.
Rob had high blood pressure when he first started training. He also had a hard time keeping up with the class when using a 12kg kettlebell. Now he is off blood pressure medicine and is able to stack press 36kgs (about 80lbs). Wouldn’t you say that’s progress?
Toni couldn’t believe she was able to press 16kgs (36lbs). Not long after that she pressed 44lbs in a stacked press. Soon I believe she will press 24kgs.
This progress isn’t because anyone was exposed to gamma rays, bitten by a radioactive spider or came from the planet Krypton. This is proper use of strength training. I’m not the only one that marches forward. My clients progress too. This is why the system works. One person is not a fluke.
So how do you know if you are progressing? Are you changing the exercises before you adapt to it? We don’t. That’s why they are able to do the things they do. Most people crave variety even at the expense of progress. I realized this training years ago and got a little bit of out of my element watching over others. I realize how spoiled my clients have made me because they don’t beg me to change the exercises. They just say “What are we doing today?’ I show them. They do it. Repeat that process. Enjoy the progress. Sometimes it really is that simple.
They don’t give a $hit that I concentrate on the kettlebell. They don’t give a $hit that I rarely change the exercises. They don’t give a $hit that I don’t call them names like “maggot” and “puke”. They don’t give a $hit that I don’t make them run and do a bunch of crappy looking pushups like many fitness bootcamps tend to do. The only thing they give a $hit about is progress and having a good time doing it. And that’s all they really should give a $hit about.
Eric Moss RKC
I am a fitness professional residing in Hopatcong, NJ, who is dedicated to making myself and my clients as strong as (or stronger than) they look and to look beyond sexy. I help my clients drop body fat quickly, gain strength quickly and I use kettlebells as my main tool and the RKC system as my main methodology. I am a personal trainer with small group personal training and fitness bootcamps in Morris and Sussex County NJ. This fitness blog is where I have become known as a straight shooter with a unique writing style and I have been known to force companies to take videos down where they teach unsafe and ineffective technique with just a couple written words. It has become an inside joke started by a guy that bends steel bars into bonsai tree shaped decorations with his hands, that I don’t wear shirts but that is mainly because I have built up my physique along the lines of a Greek statue and exhibit it proudly.
So a couple days ago it was officially the first day of summer. For many this means beaches, bbq’s, swimming at the pool and doing things that lack little clothing and walking around without a shirt (something I tend to do year round). Earlier today I was out with family members eating some food that wasn’t all that good for my midsection when I overheard one of my aunts wondering out loud why I am able to eat the way I do and still look halfway decent.
Well the fact of the matter is I don’t eat like that all the time. It’s especially strange since my scale had run out of batteries a couple weeks ago and I was too damn lazy to go to the store and get some new ones (they are those weird button batteries). Eventually I went to the store and got some new ones, popped it into the scale and found out that while my scale was taking a vacation my belly fat had decided to pick up it’s slack. I’m not saying I gained a ton of body fat…just more then I typically like keeping, especially since the shirtless season is my favorite one. It wasn’t just the scale that told me something was up (like my weight) because I went to my training studio in Pinebrook and grabbed a pair of body fat calipers and pinched my stomach and got a less then stellar review.
So what I did was I decided to lose that bit of body fat and test drive a new program. Thing is life gets in the way…especially in the summer. It might actually appear that I am being a slacker when I have a plate full of ravioli and chicken parmesan followed by dessert. The truth is I had accounted for this to not be a step back in the program…but to actually make it a step forward in my fat loss progress.
Last summer I had a bride in my kettlebell fitness bootcamp class. She had body fat to lose for her wedding and was determined to look damn good. Part of the way through the program she told me “I haven’t lost any weight in the past 2 weeks.”
I asked her “Have you cheated on your diet?”
“I never cheat on my diet.” (I believed her)
“Cheat on it immediately.”
“Huh?”
“Trust me.”
You see what happens when you are on a low calorie program is your metabolic rate figures “Hey I might be in trouble running hot. Maybe I should slow down a bit.” and it compensates by down regulating. It’s one of those laws of physiology and adaptation that can make progress a pain in the ass but there are some tricks to keep your metabolism running hot even on a low calorie diet. Probably the easiest is to bring your leptin back by eating like a normal human being.
When you are on a low calorie diet and eat high calories temporarily, you can replenish your leptin to tell your body that you are in fact not starving to death. This was the basis behind the Xtreme Fat Loss Diet by Joel Marion. Basically cheat (to up your leptin), fast (to take advantage of your metabolic rate running hot), eat healthy but low calorie for a couple days, repeat the process.
You know while I am on the topic of fasting one thing I commonly do following a “cheat day” is I follow the warrior diet for a day. If you are unfamiliar with the warrior diet basically what you do is eat the minimum required food during the day and eat at night (it’s more specific then that but you get the gist). The low calories of the warrior diet day can balance out the high calories of the cheat day and you can lose fat like that. Especially when you have a concentrated fat loss program working for you such as Kettlebell Burn.
Anyways, ordering my clients to cheat on their diet is something I almost never do because so often the diet is violated to the point of unbalance anyways. I once asked my clients to keep nutrition logs to bring in to me to critique and they would either try to remember what they ate 5 mins before handing it to me (memory has a funny way of leaving out that which they did not want me to see).
The other thing that would happen is they would outright tell me that it was too horrible to show me (got to appreciate the honesty here). So you see for most people, cheating is not something that should be purposefully put in because most people accidently put it in to the point of being too much.
Heres a line for you. Optimal is the fine line between “too much” and “not enough”.
Well in case you are wondering what happened to the bride that I ordered to cheat on her diet. That fat that was refusing to go suddenly dropped and she was back to progressing again (Mossman was right yet again!). It violated her intuition and her drive but she trusted me and it worked.
You can only run with your pedal to the metal for so long. The rules of strength and fat loss tend to work the same way. Build up, back off, build up, back off. It works. Try it out.
Eric Moss RKC
I am a fitness professional residing in Hopatcong, NJ, who is dedicated to making myself and my clients as strong as (or stronger than) they look and to look beyond sexy. I help my clients drop body fat quickly, gain strength quickly and I use kettlebells as my main tool and the RKC system as my main methodology. I am a personal trainer with small group personal training and fitness bootcamps in Morris and Sussex County NJ. This fitness blog is where I have become known as a straight shooter with a unique writing style and I have been known to force companies to take videos down where they teach unsafe and ineffective technique with just a couple written words. It has become an inside joke started by a guy that bends steel bars into bonsai tree shaped decorations with his hands, that I don’t wear shirts but that is mainly because I have built up my physique along the lines of a Greek statue and exhibit it proudly.
So during one of my video logs the question was posted to me by one of my youtube followers where he said this.
Eric i trust you not because of your words,but because you showed us ur trainings and stuff.btw could you tell us something more about circuit training,i like running and strenght training but i have no idea how to make them work together,keep it going
I know this is a pretty common thing for everybody to want to have the total fitness package and unfortunately lots of people want to make a dollar by combining things that shouldn’t be combined such as those people doing kettlebell swings on top of a bosu ball and that sort of thing. Circuit training was one thing that promised to develop these attributes all at once and to some extent it does but at the same time it slows the progress of each attribute. But hell before I talk about that lets take a look at what the attributes are for a second.
Health is a state of complete mental, physical and social well being where as fitness is the ability to meet the demands of a physical task.
Basic fitness can be classified in four main components: strength, speed, stamina and flexibility. However, exercise scientists have identified nine components that comprise the definition of fitness: [Reference: Bill Tancred, "Key Methods of Sports Conditioning", Athletics Coach Vol 29 No 2 p19]
Strength – the extent to which muscles can exert force by contracting against resistance (e.g. holding or restraining an object or person)
Power – the ability to exert maximum muscular contraction instantly in an explosive burst of movements. The two components of power are strength and speed. (e.g. jumping or a sprint start)
Agility – the ability to perform a series of explosive power movements in rapid succession in opposing directions (e.g. ZigZag running or cutting movements)
Balance – the ability to control the body’s position, either stationary (e.g. a handstand) or while moving (e.g. a gymnastics stunt)
Flexibility – the ability to achieve an extended range of motion without being impeded by excess tissue, i.e. fat or muscle (e.g. executing a leg split)
Local Muscle Endurance – a single muscle’s ability to perform sustained work (e.g. rowing or cycling)
Cardiovascular Endurance – the heart’s ability to deliver blood to working muscles and their ability to use it (e.g. running long distances)
Strength Endurance – a muscle’s ability to perform a maximum contraction time after time (e.g. continuous explosive rebounding through an entire basketball game)
Co-ordination- the ability to integrate the above listed components so that effective movements are achieved.
Now the whole crossfit movement took these attributes to heart and based a business around it, in that they wish to develop each one of them equally and hence start mixing up some of these exercises in a fashion that doesn’t really make sense to me.
If you come to us with a 4-minute mile, six months into it you are going to be 30 seconds slower but a whole hell of a lot fitter. Similarly, if you come to us with a 900-pound squat, in six months it’s going to be 750 pounds, but you, too, will be much fitter. A 4-minute mile and a 900-pound squat are both clear and compelling evidence of a lack of balance in your program. This doesn’t reflect the limitations of our program but the inherent nature of flesh and blood.
But here’s the fascinating part. We can take you from a 200 pound max deadlift to a 500-750 pound max deadlift in two years while only pulling max singles four or five times a year. We will though work the deadlift, like most lifts, approximately once per week at higher reps and under grueling conditions. It may intuit well that if you can pull a 250 pound deadlift 21 times coming to the lift at a heart rate of 180 beats per minute, then 500 pounds for a single at a resting heart rate is perhaps manageable.
Ok so where are all the 500-750lb deadlifters?
You see when you try to juggle too many balls at once you are very likely to drop one of them. Everything your body does competes with everything else it does for efficiency which is why it is a mistake to try to do too many things at once…especially within your training session. Well you can combine elements of them in a training session but not to the max extent.
So if combining them all at once takes away from them then how do you become the complete package? Well by mixing and matching in a way that works.
Let’s take a look at it from a yin and yang perspective. Different components take away from other components so you have to find a way to stop that. According to Dave Tate strength doesn’t take away from any other component except maybe flexibility…and that is only if you do all or none. That’s why I love the fact that strength takes priority in the RKC system. Endurance takes away from strength and there are varying degrees of this. The book Supertraining has a multifactorial fitness profile which is more specific and lists 26 different attributes that are varying degrees of each other (for example enduring strength rather then strength or endurance).
So then what works without taking away from others?
From my observations the best way to do it is to have exercises that include multiple attributes but at a manageable level. For example the kettlebell snatch is one of my favorite things to do for “cardio”. Now here is an exercise that involves an explosive contraction of the hip and a static contraction to stabilize your body as it ascends up. The same is true for the other ballistic kettlebell movements. Knowing this, the snatch like an Olympic lift requires some level of strength to even begin the movement. A beginner might have trouble snatching a 16kg for a few reps. I’ve put in 640 reps within a training session before but hey I had to develop the strength to be able to do it first. With the snatch being ballistic you have to blast it up there which requires speed and power and since you work your way up you develop endurance with continued speed and it’s also been known to be an incredible cardiovascular workout. This is why my cardiovascular conditioning as well as other things are being done with the Viking Warrior Conditioning program. It develops multiple attributes but with a focus on your cardiovascular capacity.
The swing is much the same as the snatch in that it develops multiple attributes at once. Strength, conditioning, incidental flexibility and a repeated cycle of tension and relaxation that develops agility. Thrown in some hand to hand drills and juggling and it gives you hand eye coordination withing multiple planes of movement.
Now another component of strength is the static and slow kind. The kind that is used to control and to push through so that your muscles don’t chicken out during a repetition. Examples of this would be turkish getups, deadlifts, bent presses, military presses and that sort of thing. This should be done WHILE FRESH. Yeah your heart will be somewhat elevated but not racing at 180 beats per minute. That’s when your form can be compromised by becoming sloppy. When your technique is on target you can begin experimenting but only when you’ve put in your thousand or so reps.
Also for all around fitness you should pick exercises that have a high carryover to other exercises. Even with the specific adaptations principal you still get some carryover. After all if there was no carry over then there would be no use for a strength and conditioning program. All you would have to do would be to play the sport. A study in Russia tested 2 groups of people with a military oriented fitness test. One group did running, calisthenics, pullups, pushups and that sort. The other group just trained with kettlebells. The kettlebell group scored higher in every single test (which is why I am using kettlebells to prepare for tough mudder). And also if you think that you are missing out on the adaptations that come from the other movements…just include them on a light level (enough to help develop or maintain other movements but not enough to take away from others) in your warm up. Remember, you can include multiple components…just not at a level that would take from the others.
Eric Moss RKC
I am a fitness professional residing in Hopatcong, NJ, who is dedicated to making myself and my clients as strong as (or stronger than) they look and to look beyond sexy. I help my clients drop body fat quickly, gain strength quickly and I use kettlebells as my main tool and the RKC system as my main methodology. I am a personal trainer with small group personal training and fitness bootcamps in Morris and Sussex County NJ. This fitness blog is where I have become known as a straight shooter with a unique writing style and I have been known to force companies to take videos down where they teach unsafe and ineffective technique with just a couple written words. It has become an inside joke started by a guy that bends steel bars into bonsai tree shaped decorations with his hands, that I don’t wear shirts but that is mainly because I have built up my physique along the lines of a Greek statue and exhibit it proudly.
