Getting Fired Up About Kettlebells

My sister, Stacy, sent Cali and me a text last night asking if we had any suggestions, books, or other resources to get started working with kettlebells. Between worrying about the health of my immediate family members and being completely obsessed with training, I immediately got fired up and wrote Stacy the below e-mail. Hopefully it has some solid advice she can use to get started.

Hi Stace!

We're so excited you're thinking about kettlebells!  I figured an e-mail might be easier to send you some stuff, but definitely let me know if any of the links don't work or if you have any questions.  You can always send us videos of you working out and we could try to give you tips and suggestions.  Lots of people do online coaching that way.

I have included some video links below, but really what I would recommend to start is just working on very basic movements with the kettlebell and your own bodyweight:  deadlifts, goblet squats, two-handed swings, presses, bodyweight planks, and crawls (like, literally crawling on hands and feet or hands and knees).  You'll see some more complicated exercise varieties in the videos, but if you just did the above movements, you would be strong, fit, and feel great.

As far as programming goes, I do a lot of "on the minute" training and ladders with kettlebells.  These are both great options with an infinite variety of combinations.   

An example of on the minute training is something like setting a timer for 10 minutes and doing 10 swings every minute on the minute.  This works out to roughly 15-20 seconds of work and 40-45 seconds of rest.  It's a great system to get your heart rate up and work efficiently.  I can go in the garage and do snatches for five minutes on the minute and have an outstanding workout.  

Ladders just means picking a movement and working through sets and reps.  For example, if I want to do overhead presses, I may do ladders of (2,3,5) (or (1,2,3) or (3,5,7) or any other combination you like).  So I'll take the bell and do 2 presses with my left arm, put it down, 2 presses with my right arm, put it down, 3 presses with my left arm, put it down, 3 presses with my right arm, put it down, and so on.  If I run through two ladders of (2,3,5), I've done 20 reps with each arm.  How long should you rest when you put the bell down?  As long as you need!  Catch your breath and shake out your arms until you feel ready to go again.  The rest periods really just don't matter that much as long as you're not sitting on a bench looking at your phone for 15 minutes between sets like most people do at commercial gyms.          

Pavel is the head of StrongFirst, the company Cali and I did our certification with last summer.  He's credited as bringing kettlebells to the United States.  The link below is a video where he goes over some basics.  Disclaimer:  The video is kind of awkward and funny.  You'll get what I mean.  If you search any combination of Pavel, StrongFirst, and kettlebells on Youtube, you'll find tons of good videos.  

This video is from StrongFirst and shows some of the testing standards of some of the basic movements.  It might at least give you some ideas of what to look for when you're doing the movements, but there are some varieties in here you won't need, at least to start.

This video by Pat Flynn is very brief, but shows the goblet squat, one of the best movements in the world, period. 

Please keep us posted on your progress and any questions about anything.  We freaking love this stuff so much.  I was sitting here typing this out and telling Cali I was getting fired up about kettlebells just thinking about them.  

Mark