Essential Kettlebelling

[Fat Cat]

I had to rest my left shoulder from a program that revolved around ballistic overhead lifts, but I still include kettlebells work in every workout I do for the simple fact that it gives more bang for it's buck that any other single type of training I can think of.

So, for those who appreciate cattleballs, I have a question. If nothing else, when I pick one up, I'm gonna do swings. I know it's not very original, but damn if swings don't make me feel stronger at everyday activities like running, jumping, (and popping your sister ).

What do you consider the basic, "can't miss it" movements?

[SubClaw]

Double KB cleans and front squats. They differ A LOT from their barbell counterparts.

[Fat Cat]

Ever combine them into a squat clean type movement? I could see that as a superb conditioner.

[Sangoma]

I am impartial to snatch. Can ruin your shoulder though. I also like double KB front squat. It is definitely different from its BB counterpart, but I don't do much of it - because it's too damn hard.

[SubClaw]

Ever combine them into a squat clean type movement? I could see that as a superb conditioner.

Two double cleans, one double push press and three front squats, rest briefly and repeat is my go-to workout, using a Bryce Lane-ish format.

Add some chins and loaded carries and you have a well-rounded program.

[Fat Cat]

What's a Bryce Lane format? I dunno who that is or what he does. Spare me the googling.

[SubClaw]

What's a Bryce Lane format? I dunno who that is or what he does. Spare me the googling.

Bryce Lane’s 50/20: basically, you do fifty reps of the lift of your choosing in twenty minutes. You can do it “on the minute”, using ladders, straight sets, descending sets... it does not matter.

This blog entry from a former IGx member might pique your interest: https://sustainableevolution.wordpress. ... 0-program/

The progression I favor when doing the Armor Building Complex (2 cleans, 1 push press, 3 front squats) is this: start doing five repeats of the ABC complex (that’s 10 cleans, 5 push presses and 15 front squats total), resting as little as possible between iterations while avoiding at all costs the metcon effect. Something like 30-90 seconds between rounds would be fine. This should not become a Crossfit-esque workout.

During the following sessions keep adding rounds until you can do 15 iterations somewhat easily (that’s 30 cleans, 15 push presses and 45 deceptively hard front squats in a very small time frame),then bump the load a bit and start over at 5 rounds.

If you don’t have heavier bells around, you can try to manipulate the rep sequence: instead of doing 2-1-3, try to do 4-2-6 or even 6-3-9 (this is A LOT of time compressed training volume).

Strongfirst’s Strength Aerobics is fine too: grab a kettlebell you can easily press for at least eight reps and do one clean, one press and one front squat. Rest briefly without putting the bell on the floor and repeat the sequence using your other arm. And keep going at it for ten, fifteen or twenty minutes, at the pace of your choosing, without putting the bell down until you finish the workout.

[Fat Cat]

Thanks for the reply, I'm checking out the link you provided. Who was this person on IGX?

[SubClaw]

Thanks for the reply, I'm checking out the link you provided. Who was this person on IGX?

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/memberlist. ... le&u=55046

[Hanglow Joe]

One Arm Snatches are my favorite.

Right now I'm doing a Long Cycle Clean and Jerk program 2 x a week. Extremely underrated exercise.

[JimZipCode]

Long Cycle Clean and Jerk... Extremely underrated exercise.

Didn't Sonnon say it was THE BEST exercise for fighters? Like a dozen years ago?

[Fat Cat]

Scott Sonnon, although he can at times come across as a royal douche, had some very worthwhile ideas along the way.

[Hanglow Joe]

I'm not that familiar with Sonnon.

I've been doing 10 sets of 5 on the minute to 90. Just nice to do something different.

[Fat Cat]

What do you mean "to 90"?

[Hanglow Joe]

60-90 seconds. Sorry to not clarify.

[Howieeeeee]

Swings, by far. And I almost always do single handed swings.

A few sets with a single bell if I am coming off a layoff, just to get things moving again.
Laddering up with heavier bells.

Once I'm ready to longer conditioning, I'll switch to (double bell) long cycle. Starting with lighter bells for longer time and gradually increasing. This is my "run".

[dingleberry]

What's a Bryce Lane format? I dunno who that is or what he does. Spare me the googling.

Bryce Lane’s 50/20: basically, you do fifty reps of the lift of your choosing in twenty minutes. You can do it “on the minute”, using ladders, straight sets, descending sets... it does not matter.

This blog entry from a former IGx member might pique your interest: https://sustainableevolution.wordpress. ... 0-program/

The progression I favor when doing the Armor Building Complex (2 cleans, 1 push press, 3 front squats) is this: start doing five repeats of the ABC complex (that’s 10 cleans, 5 push presses and 15 front squats total), resting as little as possible between iterations while avoiding at all costs the metcon effect. Something like 30-90 seconds between rounds would be fine. This should not become a Crossfit-esque workout.

During the following sessions keep adding rounds until you can do 15 iterations somewhat easily (that’s 30 cleans, 15 push presses and 45 deceptively hard front squats in a very small time frame),then bump the load a bit and start over at 5 rounds.

If you don’t have heavier bells around, you can try to manipulate the rep sequence: instead of doing 2-1-3, try to do 4-2-6 or even 6-3-9 (this is A LOT of time compressed training volume).

Strongfirst’s Strength Aerobics is fine too: grab a kettlebell you can easily press for at least eight reps and do one clean, one press and one front squat. Rest briefly without putting the bell on the floor and repeat the sequence using your other arm. And keep going at it for ten, fifteen or twenty minutes, at the pace of your choosing, without putting the bell down until you finish the workout.

The strength aerobics routine sounds interesting. I may try it out.

[stanley_white]

Thanks for the reply, I'm checking out the link you provided. Who was this person on IGX?

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/memberlist. ... le&u=55046

And here I am back after an absence.

My after action for the kettlebell 50/20 is here:

https://sustainableevolution.wordpress. ... on-report/

-Stan

[Croatoa]

OALC has been my go to movement with the kettlebell for the past 10 years. I feel it’s the best bang for your buck movement.

These days with a 3 year old and 16 month old twins, it’s been tough to find time to train. I find if I’ve only got 5, 10, 15 minutes or so, I’ll just grab a KB and do OALC.

If I have more time I’ll do the OALC, then follow up with goblet squats and then finish off with 2-3 minutes straight of two handed swings.

[Titus66]

Double Jerks...here is a gem from Andrew Read:

'Adding Muscle with Kettlebells': How I Build Up My Grapplers
Andrew Read: RKC-TL

Due to some injuries I suffered in 2006 I started looking for ways to train that didn’t hurt me and could offer potential fixes to the damage caused. A combination of handstand push ups, burpees, and letting people kimura me led to some real problems in my AC joint and I wasn’t yet sold on needing shoulder surgery.

At this point I found the kettlebell and the rest became history. One of the things I quickly learned about kettlebells, that I saw immediate uses for with my own clients, was that they “right size” you. If you need to lose some lard then kettlebell ballistics and the near non-stop way you can train with them will help. Likewise, if you’re scrawny and need some muscle they’ll do that, too, without that exaggerated puffed up bodybuilder look.
It was at this point that I got rid of every other type of training I was using with clients and focused solely on kettlebells. Combining kettlebells with a sensible diet and only a few hours of work a week, we get amazing results at Dragon Door Australia when it comes to this lose-fat-tone-up-right-size training.

But sometimes there’s a client we need to actually add some muscle to. Maybe it’s a guy on the edge of his weight class and he needs to add a couple of kilos so he’s no longer the smaller guy on the mat. Maybe he or she is a rugby player and just getting brushed aside going for tackles because of too small size.

It’s always funny to me when I hear people say that certain tools are only good for certain things. I agree when to comes to BOSUs - the only thing they’re good for is as kids’ toys - but when it comes to resistance training you can get the result you need no matter the tool, whether it’s kettlebells, barbells, or dumbbells.

In the RKC we teach that for pressing you need to keep reps under five to maintain form and limit possible injury. Here’s the thing – sets of five reps are around eighty-five percent of your 1RM. The reason this is important is that once we hit this magic number we are starting to work on the neural adaptations produced from lifting instead of the metabolic changes made possible.

What are neural and metabolic adaptations? In simple terms metabolic changes are changes to the muscle cell themselves, such as change in size. Neural adaptation is a way to increase the strength of the message sent through our nervous system to the muscle fibres, essentially telling them to contract harder. So we can make our muscles bigger (metabolic changes) or we can turn up the volume of the message to the muscles (neural changes).

I’m not going to go into how to train for neural adaptations. Pavel has many books out on this and the entire RKC system revolves around it. There’s nothing I can add to make that any better. But for hypertrophy training there are two important things people miss and then scratch their heads and wonder why they aren’t growing:
1. Time under tension
2. Diet

I’ll do diet first. If you are looking to gain size, you need to eat more than usual. Simple. Figure out your caloric needs based on any of the free BMR calculators on the net and add twenty-five percent.
Time under tension is a bit trickier for many to get their heads around because they simply try to use weights that are too heavy. While it’s true the super-heavyweight lifters do lift the biggest weights, gaining muscle doesn’t actually require you to lift big weights. While a five rep effort is about eighty-five percent of our maximum, for best hypertrophy results we use loads that are more around seventy percent and allow us to get about ten reps.

One of my favourite ways to do this is with kettlebell clean and jerks. Longer sets of these add size quickly to your upper body and I’ve used the approach below to turn some BJJ competitors into absolute mat monsters. I use them like this:
Begin with three rounds of 2-4-6-8-10 reps. After you do each set of clean and jerks do half that number of squats. So, do 2 clean and jerks and immediately do 1 squat. After you rest, proceed and do 4 clean and jerks and then 2 squats. Continue in this fashion until you’ve done 10 clean and jerks and 5 squats.

At this point you’ll probably need a decent rest. Somewhere around three minutes rest should be about right. Then proceed to curse me out until you’ve done all three rounds of 2-4-6-8-10 plus the 1-2-3-4-5 squats.

Here’s how we work it:
• Week 1, Day 1 – start with 3 x 2-4-6-8-10
• Week 1, Day 2 – 3 x 5 clean and jerks with no squats.
• Week 2, Day 1 – 4 x 2-4-6-8-10
• Week 2, Day 2 – 4 x 5 clean and jerks with no squats.
• Week 3, Day 1 – 5 x 2-4-6-8-10
• Week 3, Day 2 – 5 x 5 clean and jerks with no squats.

At this point you start to work on training density – getting more work done following the same programming. You have two variables available to accomplish this: adding weight or decreasing time. Because kettlebells are made with large jumps in sizes your normal option of adding weight won’t necessarily work. Going from, say, double 24kg bells to double 28kg bells is a huge jump in terms of total load. Therefore, the option of reducing the time you train is very useful.

During all this training the muscles of the upper body are working extremely hard to move and stabilize the kettlebells through the cleans, jerks, and squats giving you massive time under tension. In addition because the jerk is such a useful power exercise you’re also increasing speed for takedown attempts and sprawling.

For the grapplers we used this program with, most added around five kilograms of bodyweight in six months. The added benefit of the incidental conditioning and grip work from the kettlebell training meant we didn’t need much special conditioning work prior to big events and spent only an hour a week for five weeks on conditioning in the final build up.
Give it a try for a few months and see. Let me know how much muscle you put on.
9-23-14: try a version using the DSN in place of the DLC.

[Sangoma]

I haven't noticed: Rudnev now has videos with English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnhnvNv ... kg/videos

[Fat Cat]

Oh cool! The guy has so much to offer but its inaccessible for the non-Russian speaker.