Kettlebell Swinging & Pressing: It's Not Fancy But They Do Work For A Good Reason

 Many systems of exercise these days involve complicated moves and schemes that makes you wonder if some of these people should be in the nuthouse. There's always going to be a claim of some secret exercise or machine that does the job for you when in reality, it's bullshit.

Some equipment have their place, some are just out there and wonder how the hell do people work with them? One implement however stands out as a great tool that stands the test of time and has been used by the old timers, average joes and some of the best in athletes in the world including guys like Alexander Karelin and Sig Klein. That implement is the Kettlebell.

Two distinctive moves that stand out and can be done practically anywhere since it doesn't take up a ton of space is the Kettlebell Swing & The Overhead Press. Nothing overhyped and fun as hell to do out in the fresh air. 

-The Conditioning, Power & Muscle Building From The Swing

It isn't a squat move in particular even though some have utilized the squat in order to generate some leg strength. In it's true form, it's a hip hinge movement. Explosive and hits the glutes, core, low back and hamstrings. It develops the posterior chain, creating strength and power that matters. When you need to pick something up, sprint with a vengeance or even wrestle, this gives you the tools for those other methods. The conditioning in and of itself is insane. Bud Jeffries mastered this move to the point where he was doing 1000 reps or more in various workouts in under an hour which in turn helped him lose over 100 lbs. Read about that in his book I Will Be Iron. It builds anaerobic and aerobic endurance at the same time. Great for building grip strength as well because of being able to hold on as you swing.

Don't need to swing heavy to get the benefits. One of the best teachers today on Kettlebell Swinging is Dave Whitley and his knowledge is about as awesome as you can imagine. 

-The Overhead Press: Stimulus Through Control

Strength isn't always in how much you lift, it's the focus and control that really makes the difference. Some like to utilize a jerk to get as much leg drive as possible which isn't necessary a bad in certain cases but you do want to be able to press and work the muscles in a very specific fashion that showcases strength and power. It's not rushing or ego lifting. It's true connection to the muscles you're working. 

The upper body does the most work. Engage the core as you clean and ready to press, focus on the grip, triceps and shoulders. Do your best not to jerk. Building thick shoulders and dense triceps, strengthen the rotator cuff and building tension. Progressive Overload. When you learn to be in control, the strength will follow in time. Creating real functional muscle and not counterfeit muscle that will break you. 

Progress isn't always pretty and perfection is virtually non-existent. The key thing to remember is that we all learn things differently and our progress takes more or less time depending in the individual. Don't chase perfection, chase being functional with solid technique that works in your favor. Even the smallest fraction of progress still leads to the big picture. Control the weight, own your reps and the muscle/conditioning will come. Be amazingly awesome and have fun in your journey. 

Sledgehammer Training: The Kind Of Strength That Also Meets Controlled Violence

 You can train in many different ways and practice methods from several eras. You can be on a machine and get something going, count reps until the cows come home on the bench until someone takes it over once you're done. Then there's the sledgehammer. A tool that just (pun intended), strikes different.

In the video below, working with a hammer isn't about looking like a pretty boy or following someone in a spin class, it's about making a killer piece of steel a part of building a powerful and strong physique that has the go along with the show. Working in unison as if you and that hammer are one. Control, Rotate & Lift as you put explosiveness into it over and over again. It's one of the reasons why Sledgehammer Training is about as bad ass as you can get

Striking with a hammer isn't always in just how the arms move. When done properly, the true power comes from the ground. Your legs, trunk and hips generate that incredible force while the arms create the guide. Scientific studies such as from the American Council on Exercise suggests that training with hammers build solid yet challenging coordination, strength, power and rotation. Emphasizing that the lower body is the engine behind it all.

Most of modern training has become or can be linear as hell. Typical push/pull/squat and all that. In and of itself they're not bad things, they are essential with great importance but us humans don't always live life moving like robots. We're meant to turn, twist, brace and chop to generate force from many angles. That's the beauty of the sledgehammer, it brings that rotation and even anti-rotation into the mix, making our core transfer all that force but also in a controlled manner.

It goes beyond what we know about ab training and not just seeing mirror muscles. It teaches to stabilize as we unleash hell. 

Another is when it puts great emphasis on forearm & grip strength. Just holding the hammer isn't going to make you some wild and crazy strong dude, it's really about controlling that long lever with a heavy head pulling the hands in directions they may not want to go. Each swing demands strength in the lower arms. Ever shook the hands of a man that works with hammers? It's quite noticeable. 

Conditioning is where it really starts to get good. Giving this implement a good swing in a repeated fashion, isn't just some rinky dink stroll on a machine that doesn't go anywhere, it tackles the heart rate with vast vengeance and forces your lungs to work at levels they're not used to. From the shoulders down to the legs, you have to keep producing that force. Some of the best athletes in the world understood this especially boxers and wrestlers. 

The mental aspects are profound. It's practically primal in this regard. The tool, a target and the job at hand. It's not complicated, just pure unadulterated effort. It's one of the reasons why training in this capacity has great attitude. The combination of aggressiveness, conditioning, grip, strength and other things into one nasty entity of equipment. It's a bad ass without even trying to be. It doesn't automatically make you a tough son of a bitch, it just doesn't give a shit what you say online LOL. 

Control the weight, generate the power and keep on trucking, or don't. Simplicity in the implement, the work, not so much. Be amazingly awesome and work on building that kind of strength that challenges the norm and gives you the type of capacity that has insane effects.

Training The Core For Realistic Strength And Not Vanity

 Building Core Strength is not always about what you see in the mirror. A six pack can look cool and it has more to do with diet and bodyfat percentage as opposed to just training the abdominals. In most cases with the fitness industry, when it comes to the Core, it's simply to train so you can visibly see the abdominals. Now, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that if it's your intent or goal. My goals in particular is not so much developing a Six Pack but to treat the Core with intent on strength building, functionality and conditioning.

It's about being capable to handle movement and digging into the very depths of injury proofing that area of the body. Not even to isolate it as separate muscles, but to harness it as a single unity that ties things together that recruits not just the muscular structure, but the back, the spine, the hips, the groin area and being in control of the techniques that target those areas like an Army or a Team working in unison. Usefulness and Vitality.

In recent times, I've worked on my Core using Isometrics that usually comes in the form of 9 positions (Dead Bug Crunch, Hollow Body Hold, Arch Body Hold and Side Bends with the legs wider than shoulder width, shoulder width and feet together each side). A good portion of my training hits those muscles anyway to build those stabilizers with the bands and such or even contracting muscles to stabilize while doing Push-Ups on the Push Up Grip Spikes. Testing the waters again with three particular movements (2 of them bodyweight & 1 with the band) and seeing what was possible. Back Bridge, Sit Ups & Russian Twists. 

Nothing shiny or complicated but can make a hell of a combo or work separately depending on what you do. Train the mid-section differently but also conditions that area with a vengeance.  

The Back Bridge or Wrestler's Bridge

Beyond something for the neck, back or hips. When done with control, it helps the body utilize tension along with working every muscle to stabilize throughout the entire chain. In this case, it's working towards getting your nose to the mat and holding the position without hands. To be forewarned, this is not about training to be a wrestler or boxer. This isn't the type of training that someone like the legend Mike Tyson has done. His style was merely to build the neck to take hits, which ended up costing him to get surgery after years and years of overworking that area doing countless rocks and holds at a pace that wasn't meant for human beings to bend themselves in.  

This style of bridging I'm showing you when you click the link on the link above, is more to build flexibility, stabilization and strength in the neck, back, hips and legs. This is what I learned from Matt Furey back in 2005 and from there learned to expand on it from Logan Christopher. You can start out doing what you can and utilizing some form of padding that protects your head but isn't so soft that it can do something ineffective. A good garden mat or a small gymnastics mat would be fine. Work up to holding and rocking without the hands for support like I show in the video demo. To really dig into the progression system of the Bridge beyond this kind of stuff, click here>>> Logan's Advanced Bridging Course. 

 

Onto Sit-Ups: Old School Style

Simple but effective in a lot of ways. We all have done some kind of sit up in our lifetime and we even did a few here in there when we went out for school sports or in PE class. While the Bridge hits the extension of the Core, the sit-up is the flexion. There are several variations you can do but what I like doing and will put out a different variation soon that will involve a combo compared to what I'm showing you here. Click Here>>>Sit-Ups and you'll notice certain things but you may also not see certain things either. What I do here is not pointless crunches or typical situps where you grab the back of your head and just hammer out reps. These are intently utilizing tension throughout the entire Chain and keeping my elbows as closed in as possible so I can keep focus on what my goal is. As I rise, I'm contracting all the muscles including the lower back, as I come back to the floor, I control the tension and then expand the ribcage so it works the stabilizers. This isn't about tackling reps for a test, it's to demonstrate that with Sit-Ups, you're not merely getting in the abdominals, you're hitting everything with laser like focus and concentration along with working on Muscle Control. You can make ten reps feel like 100 doing this and still get great benefit. 

A Variation Of The Russian Twist

Most who are familar with this exercise do it on the ground and work the muscles in a situp position as you twist from side to side. The variation I'm working, is from the standing up position using the Dopamineo Band. I learned this by using a slower style from Hanoch Rahamin who's one of the owners of the company. Being inspired what his conditioning and reputation is as a wrestler, it was natural to figure out what is possible for me to do. Nowhere near his level and don't need to be but I wanted to see what he did and how I can do it. Whether fast like him or a bit slower and methodical like me, the variation consists of doing a 12-3 O'Clock with a twist and then a 12-9 O'Clock with a twist. My pace is more in the learning stages and getting the technique down so it's like I'm learning with you. His pace is explosive and works on conditioning. Within a couple sessions of doing the way I'm showing you here>>>Russian Twists, it's already around over a couple hundred. He's done thousands of these I'm sure. 

The key element throughout all of these is CONTROL!!! I'm not interested in doing hundreds of sloppy reps just to tell people how many I can pull off. Yes I do plenty of reps, some of them are fast, some are slower but throughout the process, it's performing the movements with intent and focusing on the muscles at hand.

That to me is part of the journey to be functional and conditioned. It's about building a center that allows everything to work the way it was meant to. Doesn't matter if its bodyweight training, bands or whatever. The greatest purpose is be able to move through everyday life without killing yourself. You don't even need to work so hard to be sore in order to get results. 

Be intelligent about what you do and be able to correct mistakes when they come about. Recover well and progress gradually. Adapt and improvise if you have to but respect the abilities you have right now and take them for what they are later. 

Core strength isn't about looking like a model. If you got the goods to go along with the strength and function, that's awesome and proud of you for accomplishing them but remember that it's about being able to move and work your body to produce force when you need it. 

Simplicity is the biggest key and don't need to rely on shiny machines or silly informercial gimmicks. Simple movements, consistent training and a protective Core is where it's at. 

Be amazingly awesome and go to dopamineo.com to get kick ass bands. Punch in POWERANDMIGHT to get your Coupon Code. 

Training For The Long Haul After 40 Using Dopamineo Bands

 

When we hit a certain age, there are things we will need to adapt to. Doesn't mean we stop going after things that matter, it's just another route that leads to places where we can still thrive. We do need to train with a bit more sense once we reach 40, 50 and beyond which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The main goal isn't to punish ourselves and go to limits that lead to injuries. It's to be able to build that continuation in our journey that keeps us capable, strong and conditioned. 

This is where I believe in the Dopamineo Bands and what they represent, beyond the ability to train for specific sports and turn people into explosive machines. It's another aspect of Resistance Training to help maintain muscle and strength as we get older. However; we don't need to suffer in every workout in order to make this a possibility. These bands give you the opportunities to develop these qualities without relying on gym equipment. Is it the end-all-be-all? Hell no, but if you like training at home or want to get in some solid training while traveling, these are top notch for that. 

You can push, pull, squat and all sorts of things that keeps things flowing and come out of it feeling like a million bucks. Use them for circuits, intervals, high rep work, build technique through slow and controlled movements or combine them to your current routine whether its bodyweight or weights. Use them as a warm up if you like or as finishers to your gym work, so many options. That's how versatile they are. Versatility is a key ingredient when you're training for the long haul.

Some of the mistakes people make (myself included, I'll admit) as we get older, is believing progression is about hammering out more and more reps and making exercises harder than they need to be. Making an exercise harder can be subjective whether it be another variation of something or creating more tension. The thing is, in most people's definition of harder is through the difficulty of an exercise itself and stop making it just a simplistic move which is bullshit. Simplicity is the real key, not turning an exercise into some circus act where you end up trying to balance on a slam ball with a barbell on your back or something ridiculous. Progression can mean greater endurance, better control and utilizing range of motion to a better quality of movement. It could also mean less fatigue during the same types of workouts. 

That's the type of stuff the "Extreme Workouts Everyday" crowd tends to forget. It's not possible to adapt well if you end up beating yourself into the ground all the time. Do you really think you can stay consistent if you're injured the majority of the time? Not on your life. It's not about tolerating the punishment you put on yourself and try to train for decades doing that. It's going to bite you in the ass if that is your goal. Our bodies need time to adapt and recover with efficiency. In my own sessions, I don't push so far that I can't walk out without looking like I was in a war, I do what's necessary and hit certain levels of fatigue that I can still come back when I'm ready or do other workouts that are less intense and recover that way. 

The major aspects of the Bands is that they're portable as well. Hook them to the door at home, to a tree at a park and be able to change exercises on a dime. Throw them in a bag and be able to take the gym with you everywhere. I've used them at lakes, on the beach, at parks, in hotel rooms, gyms, rec centers, shit even in the damn parking lot. It just makes the process and journey less complicated. Sometimes we need that.

After 40, we shouldn't really need to prove to anybody how much we can dish out or show up some moron on the internet who's only purpose in life is to be an asshole and make everybody else feel less along with practicing being superior even though it's insecurity. It's about staying as capable as we can for the next 30-40 years or more. Maintaining our levels of strength and keeping our conditioning up. Moving our body and performing tasks while also enjoying the activities we love. Stop trying to train like you're 20 years old again. It has come and gone but that doesn't mean your journey stops. It just means you put in the work that sets aside the ego trip and do things that have you moving forward as you celebrate life. 

Keep finding ways to better yourself, adapt with gusto and do the best to your abilities to keep moving forward. Be amazingly awesome and grab some bands so you can become fitter and healthier as time goes on. Use the coupon code POWERANDMIGHT to get a percentage off your order. 

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