If you’ve been around for half a year or more you might recall that last year on Thanksgiving I hurt my shoulder pretty bad in a game of football. As much as I work to be indestructible, heavy collisional forces can only be withstood so much. I couldn’t lift my …
Practicing vs. Training vs. Testing
The following is an excerpt from Practicing Strength and Movement: How to Gain Any Skill FASTER! which is the new manual now available. In working around the idea of “strength is a skill” I came up with the following continuum. Previously I have pointed out the difference between training and …
What I have Achieved…and YOU Can Too
Like I told you in my last article about practicing what I preach its one of the most important things that I do. So I wanted to take a moment and share with you the achievements I have accomplished and how you can do the same or similar ones by …
Kettlebell Snatch Test Variations for All Around Fitness
I put up a new post at Breaking Muscle about different versions of the kettlebell snatch test. 3 Ways to Vary The Kettlebell Snatch Test for All Around Fitness The kettlebell snatch is fairly technical, but not nearly as much as the Olympic lifting counterpart. If you know how to …
300 Beast Swings
In working with the kettlebell snatch I got to a point where it was going a little stale. So I decided to shift focus towards a sub-goal that would carry over to that main goal. Instead of snatches I’d do swings. More specifically I set a goal to do 300 …
PR Report 1-18-14
This one is much the same as last week’s. I’m really only working on three things right now: splits, one arm chins and kettlebell snatches. In the past, I, and many others have written about training the full body, the moves you should do, etc. Like doing an upper body …
The Old School Dumbbell Swing
I recently wrote an article for BreakingMuscle.com on Dumbbell Swing by Arthur Saxon, but since it was described in text I thought it would be a good idea to make a video for it since most people haven’t seen this lift before. Dumbbell swing is rarely practiced these days, but …
PR Report 1-10-14
I’ve been working on my flexibility for the most part this week. I shot this video which shows me doing an isometric stretching variation in both the front splits and the side. You can see me get lower with each tense and release. I can tell I’ve already improved my …
How to Combine Bodyweight and Kettlebell Training
How to combine bodyweight exercises and kettlebell training? I published a big article on combining weights and bodyweight training recently, that’s been well received, but this time I’d like to focus on combining a specific form of weight lifting, kettlebells, along with bodyweight training. As I mentioned in the article …
Beast Snatch 50 in 5
Whew! This was a tough one. I decided to go after this goal and I hit it. But it took almost everything I had to get it. 50 reps in 5 minutes in the Beast Snatch Test If you’re following along here’s my progress so far. 34 reps in 5 …
First 10 Minute Beast Snatch Test
A few weeks ago I mentioned a new challenge I came up with, the Beast Snatch Test. Back then I did my first work towards it with a five minute version. Last week I went the full ten minutes and managed to get 62 reps. If you watch the video …
Beast Snatch Test 5 Minutes
I’ve gotten back to weightlifting, taking a break from the “predominately bodyweight training” I’d been doing for awhile. Much of what I’m doing involves kettlebells, to help prepare and learn new things to teach at the upcoming Kettlebell Workshop in Sacramento, CA on June 15th. As you know, in the …
Kettlebell Challenge Workout
The following is a guest article from Forest Vance on how to do Kettlebell Challenge Workouts. A big mistake a lot of folks make who are training for general, “aesthetic”-based fitness goals like fat loss, muscle gain, etc. – is that they set zero performance-based targets. So – let’s say …
Kettlebell or Dumbbell?
Which one should you use, a kettlebell or dumbbell? IT DEPENDS! Each tool has it’s uses. There is a very popular article on this subject on the internet which knocks kettlebells hard, saying a dumbbell is superior for everything. Here is his comparison chart. Kettlebell Dumbbell Fixed weight; Expensive adjustable …
Kettlebell Infinity
As usual when outside practicing kettlebell juggling my friend and I came up with new moves every time. The kettlebell infinity is the latest. The kettlebell infinity by itself is easy to do. You do an outside snatch except you are moving from one arm to another with a handoff …