Monday, March 19, 2012, I will begin instructing a Kettlebell Strength & Conditioning class at the IFAST Gym, 9402 Uptown Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46256 (near I69 & 96th St, just north of Home Depot). The classes will be held Monday and Wednesday evenings, beginning at 7:30pm and should last about an hour. The cost is $20 per class.
The class format will be: dynamic joint mobility/range of motion warm-up, Kettlebell technique instruction, strength & conditioning workout and cool-down/technique review.
Any age, current fitness & skill level is welcome to join in. Some have stated that they can make only one of the two nights offered and that’s fine. Life doesn’t always allow for both nights. You will benefit by whatever you can do.
If you have your own Kettlebell, bring it along. It might be helpful to learn on the KB you’ll use at home. If you don’t own one yet, there will be KBs to use until you do.
If you are interested in learning proper Kettlebell technique and getting into better condition at the same time, now is your opportunity. Contact me at rick.huse@comcast.net and 317.372.3532.
Thanks!
Rick
As promised, the focus will now turn to strength training and we’ll start with your ass.
The glute complex (your hips) has the greatest potential for strength and power in the human body, is the foundation for all ground based movement and if used properly, lifts things up (like the grandkids) and spares the low back. Let’s call this the “lifting things up” or the deadlift pattern.
Because of the enormous amount of sitting done in our modern life style, many adults can’t find their glutes (through muscle activation) with a map, hand mirror and a flashlight. When you place them on their backs on the floor with their knees up and feet planted on the ground, then have them try to raise their hips off the floor by contracting just their glutes. Many will fire their hamstrings while their glutes remain totally quiet. This situation has been referred to as glute amnesia, a disconnect between brain and muscle. The body will find a way to accomplish the desired task by resorting to Plan B, in this case, the hamstrings, if the primary movers,the glutes, are off line. The hips will move off the ground but at a cost: inefficient movement, lower performance potential and higher risk of injury to the Plan B muscles and also to surrounding tissue and joints.
Learning to properly hinge the hips and to activate the glutes are critical for skilled and graceful movement as you age. This is life quality for now and into your future. So lets try the foundation movement, the hip hinge:
1. Stand with your feet about hip width apart and hands resting on the front of your thighs. You can also hold a light barbell or a pair of light dumbbells to provide a little resistance.
2. With your lower legs perpendicular to the ground, push your hips backward while bending forward at the hips. Your upper body will fold over with your back in a straight line from tail bone to the back of your head.
3. Do not squat and do not bend forward at the waist (lumbar spine).
Once your hands reach your knees, pause, focus on your glutes, tighten them as you try to push the ground away with your feet. Return to standing with a straight line from heels to the back of your head.
4. Rinse and repeat until the movement feels natural.
5. If in doubt, keep your hips higher while you bend forward and sense your upper body closing the distance with ground.
6. If you have health issues, balance problems or serious muscle weakness, seek proper medical assistance.
Your body is programmed to avoid falling on your face by trying to stay more upright and bending your knees more into a squat pattern if it doesn’t sense proper muscle activation. If you learn to position you skeleton into the correct architecture for the movement your attempting and recruit the target muscles for that movement, this case the glutes and core, you will not face dive. If you do splat, see 6# above and please post the video on YouTube.
Next, we will discuss actual deadlift exercises and program design ideas.
In the last blog, I discussed that the 40 plus age group had different training needs because of the effects of aging: loss of strength fibers (sarcopenia), weakening of connective tissue with the resulting aches and pains and injuries, joint issues (arthritis and loss of range of motion), hormonal changes, weight gain (especially visceral fat), heart disease and diabetes. For many in this age group, other medical conditions seem to appear from out of nowhere. Theories for why range from genetics to reduction of stem cells but the fact remains, unexpected conditions and diseases show up uninvited and certainly unwanted from about 45 and beyond.
It is the responsibility of a trainer to know the issues of the Aging Active Adults just as they would with any other special population group and design training programs accordingly. If someone is training themselves, they also need to know a lot more about their body, especially their age related limitations.
Reminder for those training themselves: the ego is a great motivator for getting you ass off the couch but an absolute terrible coach. The ego will beat the crap out of you to feel good about itself without regard for what the body can recover from, short and long term. It actually believes in such silliness as “no pain, no gain” and other macho slogans and the ego is the reason for most training injuries and setbacks. Don’t me wrong, I believe in training hard (which is a relative term) but I just don’t believe in training stupid.
“A true professional knows what to do and when to stop doing it.”
With that said, lets discuss the need for strength.
Story time.
One of the leadership of the National Strength and Conditioning Association was recorded lecturing his graduating class in exercise science. He asked if they would teach a 65 year old woman, who had never weight trained to do a barbell squat. The question was loaded: female, age, no experience and an athletic lift. As their professor, he was asking for a yes or no answer and because they had been in his class all year, they knew if they answered it question incorrectly, he would nail them. So everyone set in silence.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he said. “Since you’re not going to answer the question, I will do it for you. She has to stand up from a chair. Its the same movement pattern. We are going to work with her on a life skill and make her stronger in that pattern at the same time.”
Oh, that’s not what they excepted. They were thinking leg press, leg extensions and leg curls would be safer for a female of that age with no weight training experience than doing the squat. But he played the functional strength card and trumped their unstated answer.
But the he added, “I don’t think you really get it and I want to make sure you do. Imagine its 15 years later and she is now 80 years old in a nursing home and she can’t get up from the toilet without assistance. She has lost her life independence. Did you do her any favor by not teaching her to do the squat?”
I didn’t believe it possible but a client of mine beat his add-on when she told me that her mother-in-law died in a nursing 6 months prior to our conversation. She had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. She had hit the assist bottom but no one saw it. The next morning, they found her dead on the bathroom floor. She had fallen off the toilet during the night and had broken her neck.
No one wants to be that 80 woman. No one wants their remaining years on this planet unable to move as a functioning independent adult but if no effort is made to maintain strength fibers and joint range of motion, we’ll certainly slide down to the lower levels movement quality until we’re stuck on the toilet of life.
I don’t like motivating through negative imagery but sometimes you have to hit people in the head with a following chair to get their attention. I’d rather discuss the joy of connecting with your body, finding out what an amazing vessel it is to experience and travel through life and to feel the power that resides beneath the outer shell.
Our bodies were designed to move and to work, actually to work hard and for long periods of time. If not, we would have been eaten by big cats thousands of years ago. It was just within the last 100 years that we have made life so physically easy that we are now dying from lack of movement, especially from intense movement that signals the cells that we are important to our family, the tribe and the village, important enough for the cells to make a concerted effort to keep us around.
Think of exercise like a prescription drug. It is a concentrated dose of intense activity used to communicate the message that we are, in fact, really important for something all the way down to the cell level.
Contrary to the common belief about the role of cardio, strength is the fitness component that sets the foundation for all of the other forms of fitness activities. If your muscles are not strong enough to support basic movement patterns, there is no way you can do cardio exercise for very long before something breaks down and then you have to stop while joints, connective tissue and/or muscles have time to heal.
In this article, I wanted to make it clear why you need to incorporate some form of strength training in your fitness program design. In future articles, I’ll discuss actual strength training strategies and the rationale behind them. Don’t be surprised if Kettlebells come up frequently and I promise to continue my relentless attack on training stupidity.
There comes a day when you wake up one morning and realize you’re not 25 any longer. Usually, this happens when you’re 50 or in other words, after 25 years of denial and of being totally oblivious to to nature’s less than subtle warnings: hair loss and color change, skin texture and wrinkles, where did that body fat come from and when did that thing (?) become so heavy to lift and those stairs weren’t that high last year. The mind feels young but the body fades in and out of pretend youth. The body is also willing until it gets tired or pain rises above the level of annoyance. But there is hope, you can be cool without being young but cool doesn’t make you stronger, quicker, more flexible, thinner and the owner of painless joints.
When you were younger, the goal of exercise was to look better naked. It seems reasonable because younger people look better naked than old farts and besides, older people have more pressing issues like serious joint pain, heart disease, diabetes, age related weight gain, hormonal changes and perhaps even the chilling shadow of cancer has visited them. No doubt that looking better and feeling better about yourself is really an important motivator to exercise but they pale in comparison to these life altering issues. Therefore, the motives for training of an aging active adult are more complex than a 25 year old and must be recognized and honored when designing training programs.
If you are a trainer working with individuals 50 plus or you happen to be a fitness enthusiast over 50, these are things you need to be aware of:
Sarcopenia: interesting word to say, not so good to have. Heavy chain muscle fibers start dying out around age 30. Most professional athletes retire in their 30’s because they have lost a step (power & strength) and can no longer compete with younger athletes. Since most adults do not push their athletic genetic limits, they become aware of this loss of step in their 40’s or certainly by their 50’s. This fiber loss is called sarcopenia. Unless there is some attempt to retain strength through formal strength training, this strength loss will continue at a ever increasing and very noticeable rate. Common movement patterns: sit to stand, picking things up, pushing away and pulling back, pushing up and pulling down, will become increasing more difficult as life quality decreases. Many people just give in to the process and call it “getting older”. It doesn’t have to be that way. Strength training can certainly slow it down.
Joint Issues: connective tissue seems to injure more easily and take longer to heal. Tendonitis becomes an all too common answer to the question, “How are you feeling?”. Dynamic joint mobility training help regain joint range of motion and lubricate joint surfaces with synovial fluid for cartilage health. Time has to be allowed in the program design for something the young take for granted.
Slow Recovery: it takes longer for the body to repair and to make new tissue. This seems to be related to changes at the DNA & RNA levels as we age and of course, changes in hormonal levels further compound the problem. Knowing this, nutrition and rest are key for proper recovery. The aging active adult has very little margin for error. Without proper nutrition and rest, progress will stall and the likelihood for injury will increase.
Balanced Training: cardio exercise is still important for overall health but must be managed in such a way as to not interfere with the recovery for strength and not to add to the training volume to the point over-training and adversely effecting the immune system. The body also does not respond well to being forced to adapt to opposing stimulus (cardio vs strength). It gets confused as to what it is exactlybeing asked to do. How much cardio is very individual but it is easy to error on the side of too much. Interval training may be an answer to those concerns by reducing the training time factor while still challenging the alactate, anaerobic and aerobic substrates for improved conditioning.
Shared Epiphany: there is a common experience at this age that there is a price to be paid for all of the fitness and health related issues you chose to ignore when you were younger. Pain, discomfort, illness and excess body fat are the reasons for your body’s Come to Jesus Meeting. Corrections are demanded and your currency for payment is time and effort to be spent bringing the body back into balance. The Aging Active Adult has been humbled enough by aging to be open to addressing these issues if the guidance they receive makes sense.
With the number of Aging Active Adults increasing, both trainers and the older clients should understand the training needs and limitations of this age group in order to develop the best program designs that will effectively produce results and at the same time do no harm. So far, the fitness industry and fitness media have chosen to ignore the 800 pound gorilla by focusing on the 25 to 40 year olds but it is the Aging Active Adults have both the need and the money and they understand the youth genie is not going back in the bottle but that life quality can be a whole lot better through proper training and nutrition.
Someone on Facebook said she wanted to train her back harder than her grip would allow and asked which would be better, lifting straps or Versa Gripps. The answers bounced back and forth between the two options (usually bodybuilders doing the commenting) but I just had to offer a third option: neither.
“Old school – develop your grip strength so it’s not the weak link.”
Some of the clueless responses from a few bodybuilders about grip work interfering with arm and back day and how you couldn’t develop your back if you had to wait for your grip were sadly amusing.
If she did use the straps or Versa Gripps to allow for heavier loading of the back for the shake of back development (aesthetics), the grip would continue to be weaker than the muscles up the movement chain and will therefore be a rate limiter in the upper body’s functional strength. This imbalance could be source of future injuries, as well. And of course, this begs the question, why is there an imbalance in the first place?
When the focus of fitness is to look better naked in front of a mirror, concepts like correcting movement deficiencies, addressing strength weaknesses and the effects of rate limiters on functional strength have as much interest as broccoli to a 3 year old.
It is easy to pick on bodybuilding because to those on the outside, bodybuilding seems to be the extreme example of narcissistic frivolousness but alas, all exercise and fitness pursuits have a huge egocentric component, whether its picking up more weight, running faster/further or killing Fran or Fight Gone Bad.
(BTW, never underestimate the power of looking better naked in front of a mirror regardless of ones fitness passion. This is the major driving force in the fitness economy with performance improvements coming in a distant second.)
The point is that we are all results driven regardless in our fitness interests. We want improvements to arrive quicker and the process to be easier even if the shortcuts we take for short term gains have a high price at the back end. Seemingly innocent lifting straps are at one end of the shortcut continuum and PEDs at the other but they all are attempts to circumvent the body’s natural processes. All the things you chose to ignore, neglect and ill advised shortcuts taken will eventually show up during your Fitness Come to Jesus Meeting sometime in your 40’s & 50’s. And just know that the companying injuries that come during that meeting are served in a broccoli casserole, heavily season with I Told You So.
Take shortcuts and ignore weakness at your own peril.
There, I just told you so. Go eat your broccoli
Kettlebell lifting: technique, technique, technique. Oh, did I mention technique?
Success in Kettlebell lifting begins with proper technique and that is best taught by direct one-on one coaching. Pavel set up the RKC instructor network shortly after introducing the Kettlebell in the American market in 2001 in order to get this type of training down to the grass roots level. He knew that without it, the Kettlebell would not succeed in the long run.
Well, I assume since you are reading an article titled, “Kettlebell Instruction: My Approach”, that you are considering Kettlebell training and that you are possibly seeking Kettlebell instruction. The Kettlebell has proven itself to be a great training tool with a long, fascinating history (Russia) and yes, you do need proper instruction in order to lift effectively, efficiently and of course, safely. In ten years of providing kettlebell instruction, I have yet to meet anybody who has “gotten it right” on their own. Books and DVDs are only good up to a certain point and the quality and accuracy of that information from those sources varies greatly. I’ve trained hundreds of people who thought they had it “right” through self-instruction but found after going through the Kettlebell Basics Session that they were not even close.
In the world of sports, we have seen the importance of proper coaching. Even Tiger Woods has a swing coach. It is pretty common for guys to buy golf clubs and try to teach themselves the golf swing. They then go out on the course and expect to play well. Does that work out? My guess is not well. Movement in exercise in general and Kettlebell technique in particular are no different. Proper movement must be taught. If you are serious about lifting correctly, you will need to plan on seeking out quality instruction.
This applies to experienced KB lifters as well. Because of the importance of technique and skill development, I still seek out quality instruction by attending certifications, re-certifications and various workshops. I am currently working with Valery Fedorenko (WKC) to help me prepare for age class KB competition and he has reviewed videos of my lifts and has made technique corrections as well as designing weekly workouts based on progress.
The Kettlebell Basics Session I offer takes about 3 hours to cover the material I believe necessary for someone to successfully begin kettlebell lifting. For comparison, my personal training rate for private clients is $100 per hour but I charge only $100 for the 3 hour Kettlebell Basics Session, one third my normal rate. I don’t want money to deter someone from getting proper instruction but I do need some compensation for my knowledge, experience and skills as a coach and instructor. This rate has been in place and unchanged since I began kettlebell instruction in 2002. Follow-up sessions are still less than my normal training rate as well: $50 to $70 depending on the length of the session.
Some KB instructors offer free introduction classes to create interest in KB lifting. I do not. I did my share of KB promotion work in the very early days of the kettlebell by offering free classes and workshops when the kettlebell was totally unknown to our fitness culture. I was one of the of the early RKC vanguard who were out trying to create any interest we could in a crude, primitive cannonball with a handle. Now, with 10 years in our fitness culture, I believe the kettlebell does not need free exposure but it certainly does need quality instruction more than ever.
When instructing KB technique, I work mostly one-on-one and occasionally with two people at the same time (if a couple or friends would like to learn together). This allows me to focus on the needs of the individual(s). Larger classes may be fine for group exercise but I do not find them conducive for high quality technical instruction.
I start each session by taking the client through a Functional Movement Screen to determine if there are any movement deficiencies: imbalances, asymmetries, stability or mobility issues. This information is critical for how to proceed through the Basics Session and for future training program designs. This experience is also very educational for the client to learn more about their body in general and for specifically dealing with weaknesses and injuries currently affecting their training and other areas of their daily life. The FMS is worth the cost of the session just by its self.
After reviewing the results of the FMS, we begin the Kettlebell instruction with the basic Kettlebell movement pattern – the hip hinge. This movement is the foundation of the swing, clean and snatch. If the hip hinge is not solid from the very beginning, nothing works well after that. Teaching this basic movement pattern has proven to be more challenging than most would expect from its simple outward appearance but it is worth all of the time and effort to get it right.
The hip-hinge skill then becomes the swing, the most important of all Kettlebell exercises. In fact, if it is the only Kettlebell exercise a client does, they would get more than their investment of time, money and sweat back in results.
Based on the needs of the client, the KB press, clean, goblet squat, get-up, along with Stuart McGill, Ph.D., inspired core stabilization and other basic strength work (bodyweight & barbell) and conditioning are woven together. This “on the fly” customization of the session has proven to be very valuable teaching method for learning and retention.The personalized content and how it is presented is what separates my Kettlebell instruction from many others.
Time is also allowed at the end of the Kettlebell Basics Session to discuss, develop and explain exercise program design ideas so that the newly acquired KB techniques can be applied to actual workouts that are created to help the individual reach their goals.
Regarding my time in the fitness industry, here is a little more about who I am. I have been involved in and a student of fitness and exercise for a very long time, almost 40 years. I am a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength & Conditioning Association and a Certified Personal Trainer (NSCA-CPT) through the same organization. As mentioned earlier, I was one of the early RKC Instructors (2002) and have continued with the RKC ever since. For the record, I was the very first RKC to qualify for the CK-FMS (Certified Kettlebell-Functional Movement Screen) in 2008. I am also a Certified Fitness Instructor, Coach and Strength & Conditioning Coach with the World Kettlebell Club which is the competition style of Kettlebell lifting. Addition to that, I have a sub-speciality in low back disorder and exercise, greatly influenced by Stuart McGill, Ph.D. and others.
If you are interested in exploring Kettlebell instruction further, please contact me by email: rick.huse@comcast.net or calling 317 372 3532.
I will also be offering Kettlebell Training classes in the very near future. Send me an email and I’ll update you when the place and times are set.
With Thanksgiving receding in our rearview mirror, the season of fitness gullibility and greed is upon us. Miracle diets and supplements, worthless equipment and senseless workout programs are gathering to form a mindless media avalanche of informercials, books, magazine articles, DVDs, unwanted emails and YouTube wannabe experts: a blizzard of mind numbing fitness crap until the first warm day of spring.
For those selling products, this is just an exercise in marketing. Quality and actual performance mean nothing. In fact, they would just reduce their large profit margins. And there is a snow’s chance in hell that they would provide valid research to support their outrageous claims. “If you can’t convince them, then just confuse them.”
Here is a little story that should get your attention:
When I first came in contact with the Bowflex gym, it was called the Schwinn Bowflex because the Schwinn Fitness Division had the rights to sell it through retail channels back in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s. Anyone who wanted to sell the popular Schwinn AirDyne had to become a Schwinn Fitness Dealer which meant buying 5 of every product under the Schwinn Fitness banner. So of course, we had to order 5 Bowflex Gyms. It failed miserably on the retail floor where people could actually try it out. It took 3 years to sell 5 Bowflex, 2 came back twice and we had to sell the last 2 below cost just to get them off the floor. This failure was so consistent across the country, Schwinn cancelled their contract with Bowflex and switched to traditional weight stack home gyms. Bowflex disappeared into the swamp of bad fitness equipment hopefully never to be seem again.
The fitness industry thought the Bowflex was gone forever but we were wrong. A marketing company, Direct Focus Marketing, drug it out of the swamp, hosed it off and began a massive TV marketing campaign which made billions of dollars. Keep in mind the Bowflex failed when people could try it out but succeeded beyond imagination through the impact of TV exposure and slick marketing techniques
By the way. the retail selling price for their most expensive model was $1295. The TV selling price was around $2295 for the same product.
One of our vendors was purchased by Direct Focus Marketing/Bowflex. During the course of a dinner meeting, our contact asked the CEO of Bowflex how they took a $1295 retail item (that failed) and were able to get $2295 for the same item on TV. The CEO explained that they increased the advertised price every two weeks by $200. When the order volume began to drop, they simply went back to the last successful price.
In other words, the price had nothing to do with true value and a fair profit margin. It was based on whatever the “suckers” were willing to pay.
Truth, logic and valid research are not invited to this party. It is well known in the marketing world that the desirous ego can be easily manipulated when “bigger, faster, stronger, prettier, slimmer, quicker & easier” are promised regardless of the facts. To the marketers, facts just get in the way of commerce. They know that the ego really wants to believe its desires can be easily achieved and is also willing to be convinced that the only thing preventing their realization is just merely a matter of making a small investment. The ego/charge card connection is the magic switch which turns the “miracle machine” on.
We have all been caught by our fitness desires. I certainly have and I know some every bright fitness authorities who have made some really stupid purchases as well. The marketers just need to find the right button to push and if they’re any good they’ll find yours, too, unless you can separate yourself from the desired results long enough to clear your head.
If you can disconnect your ego, it is amazing to watch the manipulation while in progress. The half hour P90X shows are classic: claims, bullet-points, testimonials, buy now, repeat but with special offerings and bonuses, repeat but add time limits, repeat, repeat, repeat…
Searching for the mythical Fitness Holy Grail does keep improving fitness but expecting to actually find it is delusional. It does not exist and never has. Finding real answers to your fitness quest in the Fitness Silly Season is like chasing a white rabbit in a blizzard and the people making these worthless fitness promises to your ego are also the same people are making it “snow”.
There is still hope, however. There are educated, responsible and talented fitness experts to provide guidance. There is proven nutritional information (diet & supplements) from reliable sources to support the body’s adaptation to exercise and of course, quality exercise equipment that actually works and does it safely. But the mass media and the internet are not the places to look for it is impossible to see reality in a blizzard.
I have received some interesting feedback from readers who recently tried the 20/40 Kettlebell Swing workout. So I thought I’d add to the basic program with how the regress and progress in order to “wave” the workouts, light, medium and heavy.
Regression is simple, use a lighter weight, reduce the number of cycles or change the work to rest ratio to 15/45. These lighter days can be used for recovery and they are also a perfect opportunity to focus on the swing movement pattern.
Progression is straight forward, heavier weight or change the work to rest ratio to 25/35 or even 30/30. I do not, however, recommend increasing the cycles beyond the max of 20 because that would defeat the goal of a brief intense workout that works endurance and power. Increasing cycles would tend to reduce the power output and drift more toward being more aerobic.
“Waving” your workouts would involve having one light day, medium day and a kick ass heavy day in the course of a week’s training. These workouts can stand alone or tacked on to the end of your normal strength-power workout. If you decide to do that, please consider reducing your cycles to 10 or 15 depending on how much hip work you did during the rest of your workout. Stress and fatigue accumulates during your workout and if you worked the hips hard (ex. deadlifts) you’ll be surprised how little you’ll have left for power swings.
This seems like the perfect time to drop this bit of wisdom. “A true professional knows what to do and when to stop doing it!”
Enjoy the pain and let me know how it works.
I first heard about the iPhone app “ithlete” from Joel Jamieson (The Ultimate MMA Conditioning) at Bill Hartman & Mike Robertson’s Strength & Conditioning Summit at the end of August. He had great success using it to manage client’s workouts by tracking recovery. The premise is heart rate variability, HRV (the distance between heart rate peaks), reveals the dominance of either the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system at the time of testing which is usually recommended when first getting out of bed in the morning. Sympathetic dominance (lower score) shows greater irregularity between HR peaks, parasympathetic more regular in spacing. Combine HRV with resting heart rate and you have a very accurate biofeedback method to track workout recovery, certainly more accurate than just resting heart rate alone. At least, that is their claim.
I have been using ithlete for over 2 months, reading HRV/Resting Heart Rate every morning and recording to a graph to follow trends and to match up with recorded workouts to test their theory with real world experience.
So far, it seems to work very well. Tough KB competition workouts relate to low scores the next morning but I have been surprised by even lower scores occurring at times the second day post hard workout.
Other life stressors (work, illness, relationships, allergies, etc.) can also effect HRV. Many times in combination with each other. So being aware of other things going in your life is critical.
Being driven to succeed, athletes tend to push on when many times backing off or completely resting would produce better results in the long term. “ithlete” provides numerical and graphic reporting of the daily recovery status to base training or non-training for that day.
The “ithlete HVR” app is $9.99 and the adaptor for picking up the HR signal from your Polar Transmitter is around $49 and is mailed from England. You can find out more from their website www.myithlete.com.
Overtraining can be a real bitch, not only effecting training progress and performance but almost every other area of your life (job performance, sex life, etc.). I think its worth the investment. If you try it, let me know how it works for you.
I have recently had clients work with Kettlebell Intervals at the end of their workouts for endurance-strength and metabolic drive (fat loss). The protocol has been :20 hard / :40 recovery for anywhere from 5 to 20 cycles, depending on KB weight used and the difficulty of the workout that preceded interval portion.
The 20/40 split is a 1 to 2 work to rest ratio. This allows just enough recovery to continue but not enough for the heart rate to drop very much once 5 cycles have been reached. In fact, many have reported the first 5 cycles as somewhat easy. Like, “what’s the big deal”? After have 5 cycles, that snug look disappears and is replaced by heavier breathing. I’ve also gotten use to the “what the hell are you doing to me” glare.
It is amusing to see the look of realization that 10 cycles is only half way to 20 and that the next 10 are going to be even harder. So much for “what’s the big deal?”
12 to 13 reps are common for 20 seconds. Heavier weight usually results to a lower rep count. The intent is to “snap” the swing with a powerful hip/knee extension, breathing in during the drop to back swing and a powerful exhalation at the top of swing. This is commonly referred to as the RKC/Hard Style swing. BTW, fatigue is no excuse for lazy swings or drifting into bad form.
When pressed for time, Kettlebell Interval 20/40 x 20 is a great stand alone workout for endurance-strength, aerobic & anaerobic conditioning. Even with the pressures of modern life, 20 minutes should be doable a few times a week.
To make it easy to time, I use either Tabata Timer by www.Katr.com or Round Timer by www.plainandsimplesoftware.com, apps for the iPhone.They both allow for countdown, warnings and sound effects to know where you are in the interval process.
Tracking heart rate is revealing to the amount of effort needed to do the work. Comparing results of workout to workout heart rate shows training progress and tracking inter-interval heart rate during the workout also shows the accumulation of work/stress.
Take a moderate weight Ketllebell and give it a try. Shoot for 10 cycles and if you think can make it, go for 20. In the future, vary the weight and cycles to experience the different training effects. Enjoy the pain!
