Archive for kettlebell training
re: The LA Times & Yahoo News Biggest Loser Jillian Michaels Kettlebell Controversy
Posted by: | CommentsI can’t believe that I am actually about to do this, that I am actually about to defend Jillian Micheals. Alright first let me give you a little bit of background before I begin. I’ve always thought that her form was atrocious and the way she treats the contestants on the Biggest Loser is insane. I have questioned her programming and why she felt she needed to have overweight people do plyometrics (an Eastern Bloc technique used for developing explosive power in highly trained athletes) and why on earth she felt they needed to run a marathon.
I even had a running series on this here blog about everything I thought they were doing wrong. If I were the trainer on the Biggest Loser you bet I would do things way way different. It would be a lot more conservative, very boring and wouldn’t make good tv (maybe that’s why I am not making the big bucks but hey, I’ve kept my soul). Boring but I haven’t killed anybody yet and I plan on keeping a good track record.
DO NOT DO THE SWING THROUGH WHATEVER YOU DO
Well anyways the whole thing with that show is it would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The fat loss and fitness industry is littered with snake oil salesmen and she isn’t exactly helping the cause. She goes and says that all you need is diet and exercise (good on her!), and then goes and promotes some kind of piece of crap diet pills (bad on her). The thing is a lot of these overweight people are victim’s of false advertising and unscrupulous people who would lend their name to anything that can make them a quick buck. She’s been sued for it before.
But now she has entered the realm of my precious kettlebell, my favorite training tool.
Here is where the defense part comes in.
In the LA Times article about her dvd he goes and attacks the claim on the package where in the advertising it says you can drop 5lbs a week. He goes and breaks down how many calories are in a pound of fat (3500kcals btw) and points out that you can’t possibly lose 5lbs a week, and that’s actually the point I take issue with because it isn’t true.
From the article
“Part of this massive caloric deficit can result from dietary restriction — but not too much or it could cause her metabolism to slow down and she would experience intense hunger. A minimum intake for our hypothetical woman is around 1,400 calories a day, which is about 500 less than her typical weight-maintenance diet. Over the course of a week, she could lose 1 pound this way. So just 4 pounds — or 14,000 calories — left to account for.”
You want to pick on her form then fine because it’s dangerous and it makes it more difficult for me to convince people that this is safe and effective. If you read my last post I interviewed Geoff Neupert Master RKC and in it I asked him what kind of results his clients were getting from Kettlebell Burn. One of his clients dropped 40lbs in 7 weeks from his Kettlebell Burn program, and their metabolism was soaring.
If you itemize it so to speak then 40lbs divided by 7 weeks = 5.7lbs per week which is actually even higher then what Jillian Micheals’ dvd claimed. Now admittedly not every user is going to get that kind of results that that dude got but at least you can see that it is in fact possible to do it and to do it using kettlebells (safely too I might add) and I think one of the big factors is that Geoff’s Kettlebell Burn program also contains a section regarding nutrition where Jillian’s doesn’t. My test group though only followed the training portion and had a different source for their nutrition so to me it’s the actual training in this case that counts.
I guess in the end I am not actually defending her but I am defending our system of kettlebell training (which is very different from hers because it is uhm how shall I say this…safe and effective.
I guess that’s it for now but I would love to hear your thoughts.
The Truth About The Spartan 300 Workout
Posted by: | CommentsSo the movie 300 came out in 2006 and to this day people still ask me about the Spartan 300 workout. I can’t say I blame them really because every once in a while if I seem to be lacking in motivation I’ll watch a couple of the fight scenes from that movie and it gets me in the mood to find the first person I see, kick them in the nuts and scream “Madness?!?! THIS IS SPARTA!!!”
Now the fact that the Spartan’s were known to be an extreme society of badasses and their fitness levels remain legendary some couple thousand years later a rather extreme physical fitness program had to be put on the actors portraying the warriors. When people went to the theaters and looked at the actor’s unique physiques they saw that instead of looking like bodybuilders they were lean, ripped and athletic looking so naturally guys wanting to be supreme badasses started looking into what they did…and I was no exception.
In the bonus dvd that comes with the movie there is a section where they give a short glimpse into what they did.
And around the same time the 300 workout surfaced straight from the guy that trained the crew.
Here is the original 300 workout
Pullups – 25 repsDeadlifts with 135lbs – 50 reps
Pushups – 50 reps
24-inch Box jumps – 50 reps
Floor wipers – 50 reps
Single-arm Clean-and-Press with 36lbs Kettlebell – 50 reps
Pullups – 25 reps
And that is where the confusion started.
You see this workout is not what they did until they went from the before picture to the after. It is what they did as sort of a “graduation”. Gym Jones “the place where they all trained” periodically uses training sessions as challenges. Do that training session as fast as you can within the guidelines (ex. during the kettlebell clean and press the kettlebell has to touch the floor between reps). If you can do it quickly it means that you have great levels of fitness. The 300 workout was the destination, not the road.
Me being a guy with too much damn time on his hands and a burning desire to learn about what they did I dug deep into their training logs (which at the time was free) to find the areas where the actors trained. What I found was crossfit style workouts but geared towards individual goals (what makes them better imho). It however isn’t really something you are likely to be able to do in your home. I’ll give an example of what I mean by this. One training session may consist of alternating between deadlifts of 3 different bars. Do you have 3 different bars with the amount of weight necessary? Neither do I.
Just because you don’t have access to the equipment that they do doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the same types of results. The key is in the principles of what they did…not the details.
Here are the key principles.
1) Train hard. If they were wussing out Mark Twight (the trainer of the cast) would “smash them”.
2) Eat Right. One member was said something about grapes and cottage cheese and you can’t out train a bad diet.
3) Fitness over aesthetics. I am paraphrasing here but “the look of fitness will come with actual fitness”
As you may have seen in some of my before and after shots I used those same principles to get myself all ripped up. The thing is I had very limited equipment when I had left the gym. The kettlebell was my main tool (when I completed the 300 workout in a little over 16mins I had to borrow the deadlift equipment from a friend).
So try testing yourself with the 300 workout. If you can even get through it that’s pretty darn good but time yourself. Train by applying those 3 concepts and watch the bodyfat fall off of you and retest yourself to see if you scored higher. Madness? That’s the real secret.
Is it in you?
Posted by: | CommentsDo you have the willingness to stay the course?
Every day I hear about people making excuses about their training. I hear people making other things a priority constantly. They’ll say anything to justify it to themselves. It’s very easy to come up with something.
Here is a short list.
_____tv show is on.
There isn’t enough variety.
It’s raining
It’s too early
It’s too late.
I’m too old.
I’m too young.
I am hungry.
My food is getting cold.
But I don’t have a kettlebell.
I’m going out to dinner with friends.
blah blah blah
Now I am all for balancing your training along with the rest of your life. Sometimes you do need time off where you don’t even look at a weight for a week.
And sometimes you just need to shut the f’ up and do the work.
It isn’t always fun. It isn’t always convenient but if it was everyone would be doing it.
To get your goals you have to have a laser focus. I like to call it the “terminator mentality”. A terminator doesn’t allow anything to get in it’s way. The only thing that matter’s to a terminator is it’s mission. Try taking a terminator off it’s task and you might get a response like
“That is not one of my mission parameters.” That is if it doesn’t just ignore you completely.
Or you might get this as a response.
The point is the terminator doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t try to justify ways out in it’s head. The mission is the mission and that is the only thing that matters.
My mission is to get stronger. It sometimes means that my dinner will get cold while it waits for me to get my necessary repetitions in. It sometimes means I won’t go out for lunch. It sometimes means that I can’t play video games or go do something that doesn’t take priority. Very few things take priority over my strength practice.
Like I said it might not always be fun but I love achieving new feats and it allows me to do this.
Can you do that? The fun is in continuing to get better. The fun is knowing you are accomplishing something. The end justifies the means.
Get a laser focus. Have a die hard terminator mentality and achieve what you previously thought impossible. It isn’t in everybody which is why people rarely achieve their results. The question is….
Is it in you?
Rom fast exercise…uh thing. Are you kidding me?
Posted by: | CommentsYou know every once in awhile you come along something revolutionary, something extraordinary and something that makes you question everything you know or thought you knew. This isn’t that something.
4 minute exerciser
Now maybe this thing provides a heck of a workout but I will probably never know. Curiosity will not over power my stinginess to subtract 15 grand (yeah you heard me) from my bank account in order to try it out. This thing promises to provide a world class workout in as little as 4 minutes including the muscles that push pull and squat. Perhaps it does but like I said at a hefty price tag of 15 thousand big ones, I’ll never know.
But I do have some questions.
What about “core stability”?
What if your sport requires you to go longer then 4 minutes?
Is this 1 size fits all? If yes that means that an NFL player should leave Defranco’s gym will be able to use it and a sedentary woman will be able to leave Curves for this?
No supervision required? Idiot proof?
And here is a simple observation. One of the selling points is that it only takes 4 minutes which makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule. Well judging by the size of that thing that means you aren’t going to be taking it anywhere so that means you would have to go back to wherever it is to use it. Doesn’t seem so easy to fit into a schedule for a lot of people.
And if 4 minutes is all you have to spare for exercise…how valuable is your time that would justify the purchase of this thing over something else that takes a little bit longer? Does that mean that a 20 minute workout using an $80 piece of equipment isn’t worth your time? Are you Donald Trump? (If you are what are you doing reading my blog if your time is worth that much money?) To conclude, are you kidding me?
What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Why?
Thoughts on the Shane Carwin fight against Brock Lesnar
Posted by: | CommentsWarning there are spoilers.
As you might know I am a fan of Mixed Martial Arts both because I was a martial artist with a love of Judo in particular and because I am a strength and conditioning coach/personal trainer. Now this past weekend was a big fight between Shane Carwin who came in with an astonishing record of 12 wins and zero losses with nobody even making it out of the first round and Brock Lesnar a freakish athlete who held the legitimate Ufc heavy weight belt. Here let me just show the promo video so you can get a little bit of an understanding of what the fight was like in case you went unaware of it.
Now here come the spoilers.
The entire first round was very one sided in favor of Carwin. Carwin has monstrous power and was giving an incredible beatdown on Lesnar. If you ever wondered what a frightened look on Lesnar’s face would be like it was after he felt the power of Carwin. I was amazed that they didn’t stop the fight thats how much of a beat down it was.
The thing is it didn’t last. Going into the second round Carwin basically locked up and had lost all of his strength/power and was unable to stuff Lesnar’s takedown. A friend of mine who could actually be a fight analyst had a little debate with me via facebook comments where he said it was probably attributed to “adrenaline dump”. I figured he was unable to buffer his lactic acid.
According to an article on MMAfighting.com Carwin claimed to be feeling the effects of lactic acidosis. Supposedly it happens with the build up of lactic acid in your body which causes the effects of fatigue and is a biproduct of the body using it’s ATP stores (adenosine tri phosphate).
Now I’m not going to pretend to be smarter then Greg Jackson (Carwin’s trainer) because I have no champions or number 1 contenders to my credit while he’s put out the likes of Carwin, Georges St. Pierre, Rashad Evans as well as a host of other bad asses. I can only comment as a coach on the outside looking in.
Carwin has serious power but it appears he doesn’t have power endurance. It could be because he hasn’t trained to produce, buffer and tolerate high levels of lactic acid which would be required for power endurance. The only thing I can really recommend is to program that into his training sessions with specific work rest ratios with the intention of doing that. The only way I really know how is with the lactic acid tolerance protocol and lactic acid boost protocol from Viking Warrior Conditioning.
Since power is a function of strength and speed I would probably focus a little bit more on speed via over speed snatches done to the rules of that book. I really believe that if he could have maintained the kind of power he had in the first round of that fight it would have been him walking out with that 4x hand raised in the air of victory.
I am currently doing the V02 Max protocol from that book and it is actually a little scary how effective it is.
So what do you think? Do you agree with my opinions? Yes or no I am curious what you think.
