essential abs: a 12-week step-by-step formula …...intro hey guys, chris lopez here. i’m a...

ESSENTIAL ABS: A 12-Week Step-by-Step Formula

to Great Abs

DISCLAIMER:You must get your physicianʼs approval before beginning this exercise program."These recommendations are not medical guidelines but are for educational purposes only. You must consult your physician prior to starting this program or if you have any medical condition or injury that contraindicates physical activity. This program is designed for healthy individuals 18 years and older only.

The information in this report is meant to supplement, not replace, proper exercise training. All forms of exercise pose some inherent risks. The editors and publishers advise readers to take full responsibility for their safety and know their limits.Before practicing the exercises in this book, be sure that your equipment is well-maintained, and do not take risks beyond your level of experience, aptitude, training and fitness. The exercises and dietary programs in this book are not intended as a substitute for any exercise routine or treatment or dietary regimen that may have been prescribed by your physician.

Donʼt lift heavy weights if you are alone, inexperienced, injured, or fatigued. Donʼt perform any exercise unless you have been shown the proper technique by a certified personal trainer or certified strength and conditioning specialist. Always ask for instruction and assistance when lifting. Donʼt perform any exercise without proper instruction. Always do a warm-up prior to strength training and interval training.

See your physician before starting any exercise or nutrition program. If you are taking any medications, you must talk to your physician before starting any exercise program, including Kettlebell Workouts. If you experience any lightheadedness, dizziness, or shortness of breath while exercising, stop the movement and consult a physician.

You must have a complete physical examination if you are sedentary, if you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes, if you are overweight, or if you are over 30 years old. Please discuss all nutritional changes with your physician or a registered dietician. If your physician recommends that you donʼt use Kettlebell Workouts, please follow your doctorʼs orders.

Copyright © 2013 Athletic Fusion Fitness & Performance Consulting Inc

Hardstyle Essentials Manual/Transcript

Chris Lopez, SFG2, CTT www.KettlebellWorkouts.com 2

http://www.KettlebellWorkouts.com


INTRO

Hey guys, Chris Lopez here. I’m a StrongFirst Girya level 2 instructor as well as an RKC level 2 instructor. Welcome to my essential series. I’m going to break down the 6 core kettlebell movements and drills for you, just so that you can practice them and make sure that your technique is great. One of the things we really like to emphasize when we’re training with kettlebells is to make sure that we focus on technique and focus on safety. So hopefully these exercises and these drills will help you do things safely. It’ll help show you how to generate tension and lose fat in an incredible amount of time without really having to focus on chasing numbers or chasing reps. Remember these drills are not about variety for the sake of variety. It’s not about giving you a bunch of different exercises and throwing them together in a mixing pot and getting you to do a bunch of reps. This is about practice and really making sure that your form is as perfect as you can get it so that you can accomplish your goals of both strength and fat loss as well as putting on some muscle and just being in great shape in general.I hope you enjoy this essential series. We’re going to start off with the swing and take it from there.

WAITERS BOW

Hey guys, welcome to the essential series. I’m going to teach you how to do the hardstyle kettlebell swing first. We’re going to break it down into various elements just so you can understand the concepts behind it before you we actually get you to full out swing.

First thing we’re going to do is focus on your vertical shinning. Which is a very important element of the swing because we don’t want to be leaking energy. To give you an example of that if I were to take a regular Olympic bar and have you hold it and started piling on the plates, ideally the average person would be able to hold 100 – 300lbs depending on how strong you are. That’s by just holding the bar and having me piling on the plates without you moving. Now the issue, or where we start to lose strength, is when we start to move joints and start to move that bar. As we move joints we start to leak energy and energy starts to become lost. It would be great if everybody could get strong by just holding a bar straight up and down but that’s not really how the real world works. And we need to be able to exercise and be able to move and so we need to be able to move joints. But we want to be able to move joints in an efficient manner without losing too much strength or leaking any energy. What the vertical shinning, or maintaining that vertical shinning or when you’re swinging a kettlebell is going to show you, is how to minimize any leaks in energy by only moving the joints that are necessary to be moved. Now, what do I mean by that; you’ll see a lot of people when they first start to see a kettlebell swing, they’ll watch it done the right way, but their brain will interpret it as it being something else. So for example if I go to a commercial gym and I see a trainer who’s never trained with a kettlebell before, give their client an exercise like the swing, you’ll see a lot of this, where they’re bending their knees, getting down nice and low, and then driving up and literally front raising the kettlebell up and down. The





problem with this is that there are too many joints involved and too much flexion involved in specific joints that don’t need to be involved. The kettlebell swing is not about squatting down and using your knees and your quads. It’s not about lifting the kettlebell up with you upper body; it is a hip hitch exercise. And all you’re doing essentially, is doing this; bending at the hips, maintaining a neutral spin, your shins stay vertical, so notice how I’m not scooping my knees or bringing my knees forward and I’m just raising up and down. And therefore the only joints really involved, are my knees slightly, my hips mainly, and then my shoulders just to guide the kettlebell. So my ankles aren’t really involved or if they are they are minimally involved. So we’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4 joints involved. As opposed to, if you’re watching here, how many joints really are involved or how much excessive movement in joints.

To teach you the vertical shin angle, what we’re going to do is grab mini weights, weight plates or small books about an inch thick…what we want to do is called a waiter’s bow exercise. So I’m going to put my two plates on the ground and step on them with my toes. What you really want to think about, why I have them down here is to show you that we don’t want our ankles moving at all. By keeping the weights underneath my toes, that’s going to force my shins to stay vertical. From here you’re going to cross your hands over your chest and I just want you to practice bending at the waist. So you want to take a look at where your hips are, where that bend is, and you’re going to chop that area. And if I chop the right area of my hips, my butt should just move back and right away I can feel my knees slightly bend and me get a great stretch in my hamstrings and you’ll notice how my shins stay forward. So what I want you to do is practice 10 waiters bows doing that – crossing your hands over your chest, lean forward, and get that pre-stretch in my hamstrings. You want to feel that pre-stretch in your hamstrings because it’s almost like creating a slingshot affect. Your hamstrings are like long rubber bands where by you pull them and stretch them back, when you let them go they’ll snap back, creating that potential energy and snap back and really drive your hips forward.

Lets go 10 waiters bow here, bracing abs nice and tight, our spine is nice and straight, and I want you to finish by contracting your quads, pulling your knee caps up into your hips, squeezing your glutes. So imagine you’ve got a black AMEX card between your cheeks and you don’t want to let it go. And you’re bracing your abs, so that you’re head is straight up and down.So we’re gonna cross our hands over our chest and lets go for 10.Drive back with your hips, come all the way back, get that pre-stretch in the hamstrings, minimal bend in the knees. Shins are staying vertical. Up and squeeze, nice and tight. Drive it back. Up and squeeze. Quads are tight. Butt is tight. Abs are tight. Head is straight up to the ceiling.That’s three. Four. Remember get that pre-stretch in your hamstrings. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. One more. And there’s ten.

So when you finish that exercise you really want to focus on staying nice and tight and staying braced. When you’re doing a kettlebell swing, it is very much about waves of energy, where you’re going from points of tension to points of relaxation. Tension in this position here when the kettlebell is here at its highest position, relaxation only in your





hips, nowhere else except maybe your knees and ankles as you hike past it through. Tension up here where you’re finishing bracing your abs nice and tight, squeezing your glutes, contacting your quads, shoulders down and back, relaxation folding at the hip, coming back down. Exploding with the tension, bracing, relaxing in the hips, driving your butt back.

And so that is what I want you to practice do a few more bows on your own. Make sure you’re mastering that hip flexion and then powerful hip extension where you’re driving your butt forward and bracing your abs with the kettlebell to the horizon or imagining that. So practice some waiters bow on your own and we’ll go into the next lesson.

FACE THE WALL SQUAT

Alright, so I’m about to show one of the most important drills you need to do to be able to master the kettlebell swing in addition to any weight training exercise for that matter. This is called the face the wall squat. Notice that I’m right by a wall because I want to use the wall as my guideline on how to do this properly. The whole point of the face the wall squat is really to teach you how to use your hips and how to hinge at your hips properly. You’re facing the wall and squatting. What you don’t want is to have you knees or any part of your body touching the wall. Beginners ideally you want to start out 6-8inches away from the wall, with your feet shoulder or hip width apart with your toes slightly flared, and then from here all we’re going to do is focus on squatting down. So I’ve got a good distance between myself and the wall. We’re going to focus on our finish again by pulling our knees up to our hips, squeezing our glutes, and bracing our abs nice and tight. I’m going to have my hands down to the front and from here I’m going to squat down and I want to think about squatting in between my knees. So I’m going to drive my hips back and make sure that no part of my body is touching the wall. Focusing on that finish and then working on our breathing as well. Pushing our breath down into our abdomen, and then finishing squeezing our glutes and bracing our abs nice and tight. That’s with my feet maybe about 8inches from the wall. I can do it a few inches closer and that will force me to drive my hips back and squat between my knees. So chest out shoulders back, always starting off in that good finishing position where my abs are braced, my glutes are squeezed and my quads are nice and tight and I’m going to squat down again. No part of your body is touching the wall. Spine is staying nice and straight, driving back with your hips.It’s been a while since I’ve done this drill. Lets try it again now moving even a little closer. Maintaining that vertical shin angle, so I’m maybe about an inch away from the wall. Chest out, shoulders back, driving our hips back, and finishing strong. Hips back, brace the abs, spine vertical.

As you can see it takes a little bit of practice but what this drill does is really force you to drive you hips back and really squat between your knees. Maintaining that vertical spine so if flex forward with your spine you’re going to hit the wall and that’s not what we want to do when we’re swinging a kettlebell. We want to keep our back arched, minimal





bending in our back, maximum flexion in our hips and knees, and really keeping our spine nice and straight, imagining we have string pulling us through the top of the ceiling and finishing that way. And again, working on that finish. Squeezing the quads, squeezing the glutes, bracing the abs, finishing nice and strong.

So that’s the second drill that I’d like you to perform. Maybe do 10 or 12. If you are a beginning you can do them everyday, to really focus on your form and making sure you’re doing it right. Remember when we’re swinging or training with kettlebells we really want to focus on safety first. We’ll get max benefit from doing things safely and generating as much tension as possible. And again we’re not chasing the numbers. We don’t want to worry about chasing the numbers. This isn’t Crossfit or any type of method of training where we want to make ourselves throw up. We want to focus on maximum tension and doing things the right way. So practice that wall squat and I’ll see you for the next element of swing training.

PLANK

The third drill you’re going to focus on is the hardstyle plank. The hardstyle plank differs from the regular plank in that we’re going to focus on the finish. The reason I want you to plank this way is because it mimics the finish. We’re almost there, about to grab the kettlebell, but this is one of those exercises you have to master, have to understand, because it is a foundational position that you need to know especially when you’re snatching or when you’re squatting, especially when you’re military pressing or cleaning a kettlebell. The hardstye plank differs from a regular plank in that you are going to take that swing finish position, where you are driving up, your butt is tight, your quads are tight, your knees are pulled up into your hips, your abs are nice and tight, and you are going to maintain that position and hold it for time. Because as you swing, that is the position you are going to have to maintain. As you press in order for you to generate as much tension as possible that’s the position you are going to have to maintain and we’re going to have to use that position and develop endurance in that position so that you can get through your grinds and understand how to finish position properly with your ballistic exercises like the swing, the snatch and the clean.

So, the hardstyle plank; On the ground, bracing the abs, contract your glutes, contract your quads, you’re gonna pretend that someone is going to punch you in the stomach, and you’re going to pull your shoulders down and back, keeping them as far away from your ears as possible, pulling your elbows down towards your toes and contracting your lats and that is how you are going to finish.If I was to show you are regular plank down here on the ground, I would get down and then we would plank and we could probably hold this loose plank for about three minutes if you’ve got a really strong back and really strong abs and kinda hold in that position there. You can see that I’ve got a nice relaxed arch in my back. I can speak to you freely. I’m not breathing too hard; I’m not really generating any tension. My knees are soft and I’m just holding there. That was the old style plank. Not the way I want you to do it. I’m gonna show you the hardstyle plank and maybe you can see the difference.





You should be able to feel the difference when you do it yourself because you should develop some of the shakes.

We’re going to get back down into that regular plank position and we’re gonna tighten up. Get down on to the ground on our elbows. Start off on your knees first and curl your toes underneath. From here lift your knees up and immediately contract your quads, by pulling your kneecaps up into your hips. I’ve got a good good contraction in my quads.Now contract your glutes and almost posteriorly tilt my pelvis so I’m going to get rid of that arch in my back. And now I’m squeezing my glutes and you can see that I’m shaking already. Brace your abs as if someone is going to punch you in the stomach.Now I’m going to pull my elbows down towards my toes and squeeze the floor between my elbows and toes, contract my lats, and now I’m going to take my breath and pull it all the way down into my abdomen, maintain that, hold it and relax. We held that for about 15 seconds. That was relatively hard. Most people can hold a plank for about two minutes doing it the relaxed way. That is not how I want you to do it any more. I want you to do the RKC style plank. So let’s practice holding that again. And we’re gonna do intervals of maybe say 10 seconds. Lets go 3 times. So a total working time of 30 seconds but we’ll take a bit of a break and shake things out and I’ll show you how I want you to shake things out.So lets get down into our plank. Position starts off on our knees. Bracing our abs and curling our toes underneath. So our abs are already braced, we’re gonna go up for 10 seconds. Remember it’s a full body contraction. Drive your breath through, maintain it but I want you to seep the air out. Never ever ever hold your breath or hold it right up in your face.3, 2, 1 up and hold.

Now we’re gonna let that go and stand up. What I want you to do is practice fast and loose. We’ve just generated a bunch of tension in our body. And remember, kettlebell swinging is much like doing waves of tension and relaxation. We just held maximum tension in our body and so we need to wave that and balance that out with some relaxation, so we’re going to do some active relaxation by shaking stuff out. This is what we call in hardstyle kettlebell training is being fast and loose. So we’re staying nice and fast. Nice and loose. Keeping blood flow, starting the blood circulation again. In our body, shaking everything else.

Now lets drop back down for another 10 seconds.So down, knees down, curl our toes underneath, getting ready to create maximum tension but maintaining our breathing. Ready. In 3, 2,1 up.And back up. Lets stay fast and loose.I want to release my glutes, so one of the things we do in the RKC and with StrongFirst is bring our hands together and almost shake our body out. So right here I’m really loosening up the rest of my body. Trying to stay nice and relaxed and shaking my glutes out. My butt cheeks are kinda shaking back and forth there. Shaking my arms out.





We’ve got one more rep left. 10 second hold. Maintaining tension. I can feel my abs almost starting to cramp towards the end of that. Hopefully you’re feeling the same thing, and if you’re not really focus on contracting your abs a little bit harder. Lets get down and we’ll do our last one. Bracing our abs. In 3, 2, 1 go. Driving my breath through, contracting my abs, squeezing my glutes, my quads are tight, shoulders down and back. I’m holding there. In 3,2, and 1. And lets shake it out. Just shaking everything out. Making sure I’m nice and loose. Remember balancing that tension with active relaxation.

And so that’s the third drill that I want you to do when you’re practicing your kettlebell swing. Probably one of the more important ones because we want to be able to maintain that finish. Again you’ll notice that when I was planking, I wasn’t leaning back. My back wasn’t in to hyperextension, it wasn’t in to flexion, it was pretty neutrual. My glutes were squeezed nice and tight, my quads were up and that’s exactly how I want you to finish when you’re swinging your kettlebell on that top portion. From here, that vertical shin angle, flexing at the hip and then finishing here nice and tight. Bracing the abs, squeezing the shoulder blades together and just nice and straight through.

So that’s the hardstyle plank. Lets pick up our kettlebells and go into the fourth drill now.

KETTLEBELL DEADLIFT

Element number four of the swing. So you’ve done your waiters bows, you’ve understood keeping a vertical shin angle, you’ve understood how to flex at your hips, driving you butt back, making sure that you’re understanding that the kettlebell swing is a hip exercise, not a quad dominant exercise or not an upper body exercise. You’ve done the face the wall squat. So again, you’ve understood how to keep your spine straight when the rest of your body is moving. You’ve understood how to finish. We introduced the finish a little bit. And then after that we introduced the hardstyle plank, where we’re bracing our abs nice and tight, emphasizing that finish where we want to pull our kneecaps up into our hips, squeeze our glutes, brace our abs and stay nice and tight in our midsection and through our entire body on the finish of the swing. Now we’re going to start piecing things together by introducing a kettlebell.

We’re going to start by doing the kettlebell deadlift. With the kettlebell deadlift you want to make sure that you’re starting in a hybrid position of the waiters bow and face the wall squat and you are going to finish using that hardstyle plank that we demonstrated just before this lesson.

So I’ve got my kettlebell and what I’m going to do is have the handle lined up in between my ankles. So I’m in my natural swing stance here where my feet are about hip-width apart, maybe a little bit wider depending on how wide the handles of the kettlebell are. So I’m going to start right there so I’m standing straight up. From here I’m going to set up the same way I would as if I was about to swing a kettlebell where I’m chopping my hips. So I’m going to chop my hips, try to maintain my vertical shin angle





as I reach back and grab the kettlebell. You’ll notice that when I reach back and grab the kettlebell, my spine is going to stay straight, I’m not going to flex forward in my shoulders to try to grab that bell. What that means is that if my arms aren’t long enough I may have to bend my knees a little bit more than what I would like to. But we are only going to only use that in this drill, but we’re not going to excessively bend our knees during our swing obviously. So chopping at my hips, making sure I’ve got good hip flexion, keeping my arms nice and straight, reach down and grab the bell. And now I can still maintain that vertical shin angle. You’ll notice how my butt is high, I’m generating that power in my hamstring or that slingshot effect, my elbows are in between my knees, my shoulders are down and back, and then from here I’ve got a good grip on the bell and I’m just going to stand up and finish. So now I’ve got my hardstyle plank, where I’m squeezing my butt, pulling my kneecaps up, bracing my abs, staying nice and tight and then I’m gonna put the bell down the exact way I brought it up where I’m gonna at flex my hips and drive my butt back and try to maintain that vertical shin angle. And then stand up and shake it out.

So lets try that again. Chest out, shoulders back. Drive the butt back, reach down and grab the bell, elbows in between, brace the abs. And bringing the bell down the same way I brought it up.

So if I give you an angle right from the side you can see how my body is shaped, how I’m finishing. You’ll notice how I’m not leaning back. I’m not finishing in a flexed position. I’m staying nice and strong and nice and tall, finishing strong with my glutes and my quads. So drive your butt back, grab it, bracing the abs.

And so what I’d like you to do is practice doing 10 individual reps where you’re driving up, holding it, putting it down and then practicing fast and loose in between each rep, really trying to generate as much tension as you can as you stand up straight. Brace your abs nice and tight. Focus on that finish and then put the bell down. And practice doing that maybe for about 10 reps until you really master the finish and how you should set up and then after that we’ll work on the set up of the actual swing.

KETTLEBELL SWING PART 1

So now we’re on the set up of the swing. And here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got our kettlebell that we’re ready to swing. I want you to set up the exact the same way that we set up when we were doing the kettlebell deadlift where we have the kettlebell between our heals, the only difference is that the kettlebell won’t be between our heels, it will be about a foot in front of us. It will allow us to really generate that potential energy in our hamstrings and generate potential energy in the kettlebell where we get ready to hike past that bell through.

The set-up is one part of the kettlebell swing that we really want to focus on because with a proper set-up that can almost ensure that you will be swinging properly as well.





Always start off the right way. That makes sure you’re not going into any bad habits going deeper into your swing practice.

I’ve got my kettlebell here in front of me and I’m going to bring myself maybe a foot away from the kettlebell. From here I’ve going to make sure I’m rooted into the ground. My stance is going to be a little bit wider than hip width depending on the distance of the bell or what you’re comfortable with and I want our toes slightly flared apart so we don’t want to be straight ahead. Not exactly at a 45 degree angle or any wider than that because you’ll lose your balance but just naturally. The analogy I like to use is if you were about to jump up and get into the athletic position to land then that ideally would be your swing stance. That is your squat stance. That’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

So I’m going to get into that position here. I want to imagine my feet firmly planted into the ground as if I’m growing roots. We don’t want to move any further or leak any energy from our bodies by having our feet move around or having us adjust our swing or anything. So find that good swing stance. It may take a little bit of practice. But once you find that stance remember it because that is your go-to stance for almost all of your ballistic kettlebell exercises until we get into double kettlebell stuff, which won’t be for a while.We’ve got our single kettlebell out in front of us. We’re gonna chop our hips and get that good hip flexion. Understanding where we need to hinge at our hips. Maintaining that vertical shin angle and keeping our back nice and flat or even arched. This is what’s called the silver back position, if you think about a silver back gorilla, then this is the position that that gorilla would be in. So we call this the silver back position. Driving our knees back and really arching our back.

With the kettlebell in front of us we’re gonna grab the kettlebell with 2 hands and we’re going to pack our shoulders. One of the keys before you grab the kettlebell is to imagine that you’re grabbing it and trying to break or bend that handle apart. What that does is that it allows us to engage our lats and really focus on keeping our shoulders down and back. We never want our shoulders to rise up into our ear area. The analogy or saying we like to use is in hardstyle training is “Ears are shoulder poison.” And so we want to try to keep our shoulders as far away from our ears as possible and that goes for any exercise that we do be it with a kettlebell or if you’re using dumbbells or a barbell.

So we’re gonna grab the kettlebell, again try to break the handle and I’m going to wiggle my butt back, and almost open up my glutes so that I can really feel my hamstrings light up. And then from here I’m going to imagine I’m a center in American football. I’m going to hike the kettlebell back to my quarterback with two hands. So bracing my abs here, arching my back, and forcibly drive the kettlebell through and the letting it go and hit the ground. Brace, drive the kettlebell through, and then let it hit.

So that’s what you want to practice in the set-up and that’s how you’re going to start with your swing. Remember it’s almost like a slingshot effect where you’re driving the kettlebell through and creating that energy to be able to stand up and swing through.





So I want you to do that for about 5 reps and then you’re going come back with me and we’re going to practice standing up with kettlebell or incorporating that deadlift into the kettlebell.


Ok so you’ve practiced driving that kettlebell through and standing in that silverback position. That’s great. Now we’re going get into actually get into swinging that kettlebell. We’re going to do it progressively. What I want you to do is practice 3 or 4, lets go with 4 pre-swings, driving the kettlebell through. On the fourth one, I want you to explosively stand up, as if you were doing that waiters bow or that kettlebell deadlift, and drive your hips and what you’ll notice is that the kettlebell will naturally float up. And then you’re going to drop and pre-swing for 3 times but this time on the third time I want you to stand up. Then you’ll do it for two and for one. So if you want to set up with me we’ll do this together. Lets pick it up on five. So we’ll swing on the fifth on the fourth on the third on the second and on the first and then we’ll continuously for five more.Just follow along with me, see if you can follow through. We’ll do this follow-along style.So I’ll do it with you. I’ve my KB set up. I’m gonna chop my hips, stick my butt out, bend my knees, make sure that I’m in the right position here. I’m gonna grab the kettlebell, try to break the handles so my shoulders stay packed, wiggle my butt back so I have that slingshot effect and we’re gonna go five pre-swings.One, standing up on five, two, three, four and five, stand up.Lets put that kettlebell back down.

So do you see what I mean? We’re pre-swinging, generating that momentum, and on the fifth one we’re gonna standing up explosively. Drive our hips straight through, our head is gonna go through the ceiling, and we’re maintaining that hardstyle plank as we stand up. So we’re bracing our abs nice and tight. Really really feel that potential energy that you’re generating that slingshot effect that you’re generating in your hamstrings before you stand up.Remember it’s not a squat and a front raise. You’re not muscling the KB up. You are actually trying to generate float in the kettlebell and all that power is coming from your hips. So you really want to generate a powerful hip snap to get your body right through and help life that kettlebell.

So lets try that again. We’ll do it on the fifth one again. So setting ourselves up, bracing our abs, chop our hips, make sure we know where we’re going to be hinging, bell is out in front of us, break the handle, brace our abs and here we go. We’re going to pre-swing and stand up on the fifth one. Swing sling shot through. Sling shot. One, two, three, four, hardstyle plank, five. Great job.





You’re only holding that hardstyle plank for a split second on that stand up before you have to relax your hips again. And allow yourself to flex at the hips and down and bring the kettlebell back down. So lets do a full set. We’re going swing on five, four, three, two, one and then we’ll do five intervals straight through. So follow along with me. If you need any help or find that I’m going too fast for you, put the kettlebell down, you can hit rewind on the DVD and then work on this as the days go by and as you gain more confidence with your swing.

So we’ve got the bell out in front of us. Bracing our abs. Rooting ourselves into the ground first. Chopping our hips. Making sure that we know that we’re hinging at the hips only, lighting up our hamstrings, two hands on the bell, bracing our abs and here we go. We’re gonna go on the fifth one.Ready. One, two three, four and stand up explode. FiveLets go for four. One, two, three, and four.And three. One, two, threeAnd two, one, two.And now continuous five, four, three, two, one.

So that’s the drill I want you to practice continuously throughout your session and throughout your swing practice, maybe even to warm up. Just so that you understand how you should be flexing at the hips, really hinging nice and hard, generating all that force through. And now we’ll get into a little bit more advanced stuff, or into one handed swings and generating float in the bell.


Ok before we get into full out swinging and doing reps for swings let’s talk about one of the most important finishing moves. I guess every element in this exercise is pretty important. But what I want to talk about is generating powerful hip snap. When we’re training for kettlebells, especially when we’re doing it the hardstyle way we never ever ever really want to do reps for the sake of doing reps, even if we set a rep goal of 100 swings in a row we always want to make sure we are doing it correctly. It’s almost to the point where if we’re not doing it correctly, then we shouldn’t be doing it at all. And so if we’re not at the point where we can swing our kettlebell for 100 reps straight then we have no business swinging our kettlebell 100 reps straight. It’s a process that we have to be able to work at. Be able to master. What I want to talk to you about is being able to generate maximum power on our hip snap. It’ll be relatively difficult even for expert kettlebell instructors or people who have been using kettlebells for a long to be able generate maximum power 100 straight times in a row to be able to generate that maximum hip snap. So if you’re just starting off with kettlebell training don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do it initially. Sometimes I have trouble doing it depending on how heavy the kettlebell is or what state my training is in or even whether or not I’ve got enough sleep the night before. So generating powerful hip snap what we want to focus on is just putting all of our energy into the bell and creating flow in the bell. So instead of finishing where we’re not strong and we’re almost finish just to close. So ya, I can really





squeeze my butt, I can squeeze my quads and brace my abs but what I really want to do is I want to generate all that power and put that power into the bell generating that force horizontally. Almost thinking that I want to throw the bell through the wall in front of me. So when I’m snapping my hips it’s actually driving through and pushing my energy straight through the bell and the floor so that I can feel that energy in my feet and drive my hips and hold that position and not really lean back. So in driving my hips and creating float in the bell I am going to create power the that comes from my hamstrings and from my glutes and from my abs and really try to bring that bell up.So what I mean by generating float to the bell is simply setting up for my swing and then putting the energy into the bell as I fire through.So as you can see when I snap through and hold that plank my entire body almost starts to shake because I’ve got so much power that I’m generating again through my glutes and my hamstrings. So much so that I’m driving that bell up and it’s floating on its on. You’ll notice my arms are just along for the ride. I’m not lifting the bell or trying to muscle the bell up. And even if you start to get to reps 90, 91, 92, all the way up to 100 you shouldn’t ever be muscling your kettlebell through you should always be trying to generate power through your hips to create float in the bell. Your arms are just extensions of your body. They’re there to guide the bell. By no means when we’re swinging a kettlebell are we using our arms to muscle the bell up to a certain point. It’s all gonna come from our hips.

In saying that, that’s a create indication for you to know when you start to fatigue. So if you find that when you start out and you’re fresh and the bell is traveling out in front of you and you can get your arms parallel to the ground. Because of the generation of power that you’re creating through your hips, as the bell starts to sink you may start to lose power, that may be an indication that you’re starting to lose power, that may be time for you to kill your reps or kill your set, make sure that you’re fresh, rest up, practice a little bit of fast and loose, and then go back to your reps again. So use that almost as an indication as to whether or not you’re starting to fatigue. Remember we want to stay fresh. We want to emphasize quality or quantity. Again, I’ve said this before in other elements of this video and I’ll say it again this is not variety for the sake of variety, it is not working out, this is about training. We’re not chasing reps, we’re not going after numbers, we want to focus on maximum power generation through our hips when we’re doing this and if we can’t get that then it’s time to put the bell down to freshen up again before we pick up our sets again. So that’s one lesson that you really need to wrap around your head because this isn’t about training until you puke. It’s training it’s not draining. We don’t want to drain you we want you to stay fresh and that is how you’re going to lose the maximum amount of fat, that’s how you’re going to build muscle, that’s how you’re going to stay lean and especially that’s how you’re going to get strong. So, about to swing that kettlebell, I’ll see you in the next lesson. Lets get into some kettlebell swings.






Welcome to the final phase of this essentials lesson on the swing. We are actually going to be swinging now. And I’ll show you variations of the swing that you can do. So we’ve got the two-handed swing that we’re going to cover. Immediately after I intro it, then we’re going to do the one-handed swing. And then we’ll do something called the hand-to-hand swing. I suggest you don’t do the hand-to-hand unless you’ve got a nice a soft floor or something you feel comfortable dropping the kettlebell in because it could potentially cause some damage.

So for the two-handed swing, I’ve got a 35lb kettlebell right here in front of me. So that’s about 16kg. I usually use kg when I’m swinging my kettlebell, those are the kettlebells I use. We’re gonna set ourselves up and lets practice sets of 10 swings. So chopping our hips, making sure we’re folding forward, bracing our abs, I’m going to grab the kettlebell with two hands, really feel my hamstrings light up and we’re going to generate as much power as we can through the swing, through our hips, hiking the bell back and up. So that was 10 standard two-handed swings. Couple of points; number 1 focus your eyes on the point where the floor meets the wall. Ok, so the bottom part of the floor meets the wall right at the crease on the angle there. That’s where you want to focus your eyes the entire time. Don’t want to be doing too much looking down and looking back up because we don’t want to strain your neck. The other thing is, remember our RKC plank, our hardstyle plank where we’re maintaining that position on the finish for a split second generating as much power, as much tension, and as much force as we can in that position where we’re holding it out. So one of the things that you want to think about, Bruce Lee, who used to swing kettlebells, at the top point of his swing, what he used to do was focus all his energy on the end of a punch and he’s tensing his entire body in that position to focus that energy through his fist or through the kettlebell when he was swinging it and then creating relaxation in his hips as he swung it through and that’s one of the things he did to practice his martial art and that made his punches very powerful for even a man his size. He wasn’t very big at all. After that focusing on our feet rooting through the ground. Really feeling the ground, feeling the energy on that finish as we’re generating energy from the ground and propelling it out towards the horizon with our kettlebell and then hinging at the hip, driving through and folding, making sure that we’re lighting up our hamstrings and our glutes each time.

Now that was the two-arm swing. The one-handed swing is very similar, especially in the set-up, except we’re only using one hand. So we should be able to generate as much power as we could. It’s a little bit more grip intensive obviously because we’re using one arm instead of two. So to set up what I like to do is, I like to angle the kettlebell almost as if I were to have two kettlebells I would have an inverted V. The old style swinging with one hand or even snatching with one arm is to do a V type of grip where the kettlebell is turned inward so it’s facing our midsection and grabbing with our thumb down. What you’ll notice is that if you swing that way or even if you snatch that way, our shoulder automatically pops out. We go into internal rotation and our shoulder becomes vulnerable because we’ve got an overstretch and our lat is relatively soft. By





swinging the kettlebell now or snatching the bell or even cleaning the bell with an inverted V you can feel your arm turn and your lat automatically fire. What that does is that it makes it a lot safer for our shoulder. So old style of doing it was with our thumb down. New style of doing it is with an inverted V which is a more anatomically correct position and it’ll be healthier for our shoulders. So I’ll turn the kettlebell into that inverted V. Now here is where the set-up is pretty important. On a one-arm swing, what a lot of people tend to do before they swing the kettlebell with one arm is the set up will be great except they’ll set up this way. And you’ll notice right away that I’m already unbalanced because one shoulder is above the other one. So I’m loaded in my right shoulder but my left shoulder is up and now I’m leaking a lot of energy because I’m using my thoracic spine to almost turn and open. So if you remember from lesson 1 we want to maintain and not to leak any energy by only using the joints that are necessary for the movement. So what I like to do is make sure I’m not leaking energy is set myself up so that I’m grabbing the bell with two hands and then releasing one hand making sure that I’m parallel.So to set up I’ll grab the bell in the middle with two hands. And right now you can see that my shoulders are parallel to the ground. And parallel to my hips and my knees and now I’m going to bring my arm up. So this kind of ensures that I stay parallel and that I am not leaking any energy. From there, hike passing the bell through with one arm and making sure that I’m creating float in the bell with my hips just by using the one arm. It’s the exact same thing as the two-arm swing.

So setting myself up, my bell is out in front of me. I’m going to grab it with two hands to make sure that I’m parallel. I’ve got a good stance. Hinging at my hips, bracing my abs, turning my hand in into that inverted V and then from here hiking pass through and the drive up.

So you can see how much power I’m generating from that bell. If you even think about a vertical jump my free arm is driving back to try to give me as much hip power as I can. You’ll notice that volleyball players and basketball players when they want to jump up to get a rebound or they’re jumping up for a spike, they’ll drive their arms back this way to help them generate that power through their hips so that they can get height and hip explosion and that’s exactly what my free arm is doing. My free arm is swinging back and then helping me generate that power through my hips so that I can create that float in the bell.

So that’s the one-arm swing and now we’re going to the hand-to-hand swing. The hand-to-hand swing is all about generating power and generating float in the bell, so much so, that the bell will literally float in front of you and you can let it go with one hand and grab it with the other. It’s very effective as you start to get more advanced into your training so I’ll just give you a demo here.

So always starting off with a one-arm swing. I’m going to start with my left hand and I’ll swing once with my left hand, let it go, catch it with my right, pre-swing with my right, swing it up, create float, let it go, grab it with my left and lets do six reps. So three on





each. So I’ll start with my left. Setting myself up. I’ve got two hands on the bell making sure that I’m parallel, bracing my abs, and then from here pre-swing through.

So as you can see I’m generating power through my hips, driving the kettlebell up creating float in the bell, letting it go and then switching over. So that is how you do a hand-to-hand swing.

Those are the three swings that ideally you should practice. A couple of philosophical things when you’re talking about training with kettlebells; remember this is practice this is not working out. You are trying to maintain or perfect your technique and really focus on creating maximum tension. You’ll hear me say that a lot. Especially when we’re snatching or cleaning and especially when we go through the grinds like pressing and squatting. Especially with pressing. Tension is strength. Strength is tension. That is what we want to try to generate when we are finishing with our kettlebell in that upright position, making sure that we’re not leaking any energy in our joints, as we start to finish. So really take that home. If there’s a take home point when you’re doing all these exercises, it’s that you’re about practicing and not working out. Strength is a skill that needs to be practiced and you have to really focus on creating and generating tension to be able to master the skills that you need to be using when you’re training with kettlebells. So that’s it for the swing element of this, we’ll go through some other ballistics in the rest of this DVD but hopefully you’ll take away a lot of lessons from that and really practice your swings and then go from there.

SNATCH

Ok so it took me a long time to teach you how to swing a kettlebell, and for good reason. It is the foundational kettlebell exercise. That is the one you will see everybody doing. The one that everybody really really really needs to master. When you get to a point when you can you master you swing, really feel comfortable with how you’re swinging, that will open the door for you to do other types of ballistic exercises. The two that I’m talking about here are the snatch and the clean. I’m gong to show you how to snatch first. And we’re going to do that by really starting off with a one-arm swing. There are progressions on how you’re going to do this. The one-arm swing starts first and then we’ll progress into a high pull and then pull progress in to the finish.

So just to review quickly the one-arm swing. Remember what I want to do is, the most important thing with the one-arm swing as it differs from the two-arm swing is the set-up. You’re gonna grab with one arm but at the same time you want to set up with two to make sure that you’re parallel that way you’re not leaking any energy and not leaking any energy from your hips or the rest of your body so that you can maintain maximum tension. So for the one-arm swing, if I’m setting up, I’ve got the bell out in front of me, I’m bracing my abs, I’m driving my hips back, my arm is gonna come back parallel and I’m going to hike pass through and drive through. And so that’s how you one-arm swing.





Now with the snatch, what you want to try to think about is, well let’s compare the snatch with the swing. The swing, our energy is directed straight forward towards the horizontal, towards the horizon. With the snatch our energy is going to be directed vertically, straight up to the sky and that’s how we want to finish. So a swing is horizontal energy, a snatch vertical energy. Great for jumping athletes, athletes who like to get nice and high like soccer players, basketball players, volleyball players, people who rely on their vertical jump. This is a great exercise for you to master. One step before that or even between the swing and the snatch is understanding the high pull and how you really want to involve your arm now. Get your arm more involved in terms of being able to bring the bell up. Your hips can only create so much float. Now you want to start using your arm to guide the bell into a vertical position. So before we get into that full lock-out vertical position we want to try to be able to pull our arm back, incorporate our upper back into the equation and use the high pull. So when we’re using the high pull, when we’re training the high pull all we want to think about is guiding the bell, maintaining our vertical in our upper back and then squeezing our shoulder blade back so that we’ve got a good squeeze in our scapula. So if you see me from behind, I’m gonna pull my shoulder blades back and squeeze my shoulder blades together. If I had two kettlebells then this is about where I’d want the kettlebells to be. If I had one then this is where I’d want the kettlebell to be. So you’ll notice that my elbow is in and around the same level as my ear and I’m using my upper back. One of the biggest mistakes people make when they high pull a kettlebell is that they like to chicken neck forward. So they’ll drive the bell up and then do one of these, to make it seem as if they’re actually pulling their shoulder as far back as they can. You still want to finish the high pull and the snatch in such a way that you’re straight up and down. There’s no excessive movement in your cervical spine or in your upper neck area. All the movement is coming from your scapula and your upper back. So in order to do a high pull you’re driving your hips creating float with the bell and then you’re guiding the bell back, allowing it to float and then re-guiding it through your knees to be able to high pull the bell again. So the pre-swing.

So as an example, setting ourselves up as if we’re about to one-arm swing. Two arms on the bell, abs nice and tight, hike past through, explode, and then drive it through.

So as you can see, nice and easy, I’m staying relatively relaxed. I’m not straining trying to pull it back. My shoulder is away from my ear and I can show you the front part of it. And I’ll show you the back as well. So if I’m facing you, you can see how high my shoulder comes. It really doesn’t, and my shoulder is gonna stay packed and I’m just guiding it all through.

Setting myself up, nice and parallel again, pre-swing.

And so I’m squeezing my shoulder blades, making sure that I’m nice and tight. Opening up my chest and really stretching out that chest.

Ok, so that’s the high pull. That’s the in between stage between the one-arm swing and the snatch finish. Now we’re gonna talk about the finish. So here’s the truth. When you





first start practicing this your wrists are gonna get bruised because it’s going to be difficult for you to really understand how to spear your hand through. So big suggestion from me, one of the best things that saved me is getting a pair of thick wristbands. Now some of the kettlebell purists out there might want to crucify me after I say that, but in truth I don’t want to send clients home or kid athletes home with bruised wrists so they can go to their mommy and daddy and say hey look what coach did to me today. So lets not bruise our wrists. Lets get some padding on there as we start to learn it. As you start to become more comfortable with your technique you can take the wristbands off and you’ll notice that your technique will be a lot smoother. So when we are snatching the kettlebell now, you are going to high pull and then literally punch up to the ceiling to finish. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to decelerate the bell and flipping it over top and then grabbing the handle as tight as you can to try to slow the bell down to minimize the impact on the wrist. That’s not the approach you want to take. Your hand almost wants to be as relaxed as possible. You have to make sure that your wrist is nice and straight and you are driving the bell up. High pulling it and then just beating it to the spot and then punching it straight up to the ceiling. So it’s one of those things that you really have to master and have to practice and really understand how to do it, but essentially that’s all you’re doing. It’s a high pull and a punch. You’re beating the kettlebell to the spot. You’re not flipping the kettlebell over. So it’s not one straight path where your palm stays down and you’re gonna swing it all the way up and then let it flip over. You’ve gotta let the bell float up and then just beat it to the spot while you generate floating the bell. So if you want to watch, I’ll start with my left arm here, bracing my abs, tightening up, and then from here I’ll pre-swing it through and high pull and punch. And you’ll see that my hand is open and there was minimal impact. It went all the way up and from here I’ll just bring it down, pre-swing. High pull, punch.

And we’ll switch over to my right. So I’ll bring it down. Put it down on the ground. And now you can get the angle on my right. Brace my abs.

So as you can there’s minimal impact on the bell. If you want to see the slow-mo you can see how my hand kind of curves its way through. I’m spearing the bell, and then my hand stays open and relaxed at the top. My fingers are pointing straight up. So if you see my finish. When I’m holding up in this position, my hands are open, they are nice and relaxed. You’ll see that my wrist is straight. The bell is actually behind my head. So my bicep is in and around my ear area. My arm is completely vertical. This means that I’m getting a lot of thoracic extension and I’m really focusing on posture. This is how your upper back really starts to work. If I face you you’ll see that my shoulder is away from my ear. I’m not up here finishing. So I’ve got good shoulder health by keeping my shoulder down and back and I’ve got a great stretch in my pec. This is great for your upper back. It’s great for posture. What you’ll find is that after you start doing snatches with a heavier kettlebell and you start picking your reps up, your upper back will get a great, great workout. And you’ll feel a lot better and a lot meatier in that upper back and you’ll start to walk a lot taller. So snatches are one of these exercises that you really have to master if you want full body development. Swings are great for developing that lower body hip power but if you want full body development





then there isn’t a much better exercise than performing snatches when you do your SFG or RKC level 1 test you’ll know that we have to snatch a kettlebell 100 times total, not on each arm but with a combination of arms we’ve got to do that within five minutes. If you ever want to aspire to that then training for it will probably be one of the best things you can do because you’ll start to develop a great upper body, you’ll really start to drop fat. You won’t look all that much different in terms of how you carry yourself. I mean you’ll look pretty much athletic, you’ll lose a lot of fat around your belly when you’re doing this type of training but it’s probably one of the best exercises that you can do. So again, practice. Don’t workout. This is about maintaining or perfecting your form and making sure that you’re getting it right. At the top position; lots of tension. Again, contracting the abs, squeezing the glutes, contracting the quads and making sure you’re nice and tight throughout and that’s the way to snatch a kettlebell properly. So think high pull and punch, spear your hand through and you will get there and I will see you for the next exercise, which is the clean.

CLEAN

So we’re talking about cleans now. To be able to work on mastering the clean you really want to think about the concept of having quiet elbows. With the swing, our elbows are out here, with the snatch, our elbows are up here, so they’re nice and loud. With the clean; think about keeping your elbows nice and close to your body and being quiet. What you want to do is really try to get the ball into the rack. Now with heavier bells you really want to generate as much hip power as you possibly can. Obviously with any ballistic exercise that’s what you want to do, which is why I taught you how to swing first and why I told you that the swing is the foundational kettlebell exercise. For the clean we’re guiding the bell much like the snatch into that rack position. The only difference between the clean and the snatch is that we end up in the rack and not in the overhead position. Our wrists still needs to become straight and our abs and our finish still needs to be full tension all the way through out. So I still need to contract my quads, butt still needs to be tight, abs still need to be tight but now we’re involving a little bit more of the lat and we’re holding the bell in the position. Now a lot of people say, a lot of experts say that your press, when you press your kettlebell overhead when you get into grinds, it’s only going to be good as your clean. So for you to be able to manage that whole tension relaxation cycle and understand that when that bell comes into that rack position that you should be incredibly tense and not move all that much because we don’t want to move too many joints so that we’re leaking energy. That will translate to a better press. So lets focus on mastering the clean so that we can have a good press and we can develop all that tension to be able to get that kettlebell overhead eventually when we start teaching the grinds. So for the clean, remember quiet elbows, swing and snatch loud elbows.

Same set up as we did with the one-arm swing. Bell’s going to be out in front of me. Arms are going to be parallel, back is braced and I’m going to swing through and quiet elbows and the bell ends up here. And you’ll notice how I ended up with open hand, it’s





nice and tight to my body, my elbow’s nice and tight to my body and even when I drop it, my elbow’s going to stay pasted to my body as I bring it down.

So I’ve still got that same pre-swing as I was doing before. You’ll see that my elbow is nice and tight to my body. One of the drills that you can use that I’ll show you in a couple of minutes is keeping something nice and tight to your upper body so that it doesn’t move. And you can see that, and that will help you keep your elbows nice and quiet.

Ok so here’s the drill that you can use. I’ve got a postcard here and what I’m going to do is I’m going to clean the kettlebell up and as I have it in the rack I’m going to tuck it into my armpit and you’ll see that I won’t drop this postcard. And this is one of the better drills that you can do to practice your cleans to make sure you’re doing it the right way. So I’ve got my postcard here I’ll just clean the kettlebell up first and then I’ll show you what I’m going to do. So I’ve got the clean. I’m gonna open up my armpit and take that postcard and tuck it in and now it’s nice and tight to my body. Remember when we’re cleaning a kettlebell we want to have quiet elbows. So I’m going to try and regain tension in this position here and then start my wave of relaxation but the elbow is going to stay tight to my body.

So as you can see that postcard didn’t drop. Not a magic trick, it’s still there. And I was keeping my elbow nice and tight to my body. Again it’s just a matter of beating your kettlebell to the spot. Much like the snatches I suggest that you get some wristbands and not try to decelerate the bell as it starts to come over. Again, you’re not flipping it over. And you’re not trying to muscle it up and get it into that position with flexed wrists or using too much of your forearms or anything. You’re bringing the kettlebell up and then you’re spearing it through and really getting it to nestle in between that crack between your bicep and your forearm and right into your pec.The other thing that when you’re in that rack position with the kettlebell. I’ll show you here, is, really focus on pulling your shoulder down and back, flexing your bicep, contracting your lat, and staying nice and tight into that position there. Because maintaining that position and understanding that position, you’ll be able to use your lat and your bicep as synergists to help press that kettlebell overhead. So all of a sudden your body is nice and tense and when we get into presses you’re focusing on using your lat and your bicep to aid in pressing that kettlebell up. Now they’re not going to hinder your press, they’re actually going to help by creating a shelf and a foundation for you to be able to press that bell straight up and through.

So that’s how you do a clean. Remember that you want quiet elbows. You don’t want to cast the bell away from your body so that your shoulder becomes vulnerable. Remember the drill with the postcard, where you tuck that postcard into your side and you keep your elbow nice and tight into your body, that will help out a lot with your technique so that’s the kettlebell clean and that’s the end of the ballistic portion of our DVD. I’ll see you for the essential grinding portion of the DVD where we’ll talk about the press, the squat and the get-up.





GET UP PART 1

Welcome to the grinds portion of this DVD. We’re gonna start with the get up and we’re going to be covering the squat and then the press to finish.Lets talk about the get up. You’ll notice I don’t have a kettlebell around here. The first thing that we want to do is just really learn how to do a get up naked. Naked not necessarily meaning without any clothes on, but if you’re doing this in the comfort of our own home that’s your choice. But naked meaning we’re not going to use any external resistance. What we are going to use is something like a water bottle or our shoes to really try to get you to understand how to maintain balance and how to keep your arm vertical. So what I’m going to do is take off my shoes and use one of my shoes as a prop on how I’m going to get up. So you’ll know that when we do the get up…I kinda feel like Mr Rogers taking my shoes off here…I’ll throw this one off to the side and I’ll use my right shoe. Couple of things you wanna do, number one is train barefoot or if you’ve got a pretty hard surface like this grass surface that I’m on I can use my socks, but we want minimal padding between us and the floor. And that goes for any type of training. Converse All-Stars are great to use. Vans are great to use. If you can get a hold of the barefoot shoes or New Balance Minimus shoes, then those would be great, for the get ups especially. I’m going to take my shoe off and use my shoe. With the get up you really want to focus on keeping your arm vertical. We are going to lie down and take our shoe and put it on our fist. This is going to act as our kettlebell and this is what’s going to help us maintain our balance and our vertical arm. So the first thing before you get up, you balance that shoe or your water bottle or what have you on your fist, is making sure you’re contracting your lats. So I’m on my right side here and I’m kind of massaging my lat trying to get my body to understand this muscle right here needs to be contracted. Now you’ll hear me talk about the lat a lot. Especially when we’re pressing. I talked about it a little bit when we were cleaning and snatching and you’ll hear it even more when we’re doing a get up.

So let me turn myself on a bit of a diagonal. I’m going to start with a get up on my right side. I’m gonna bend my right knee and keep my arm vertical I’m going to contract my lat. Now my free arm is gonna be down on the ground beside me, almost at a 45 degree angle to my body. Now remember how I said before that ears are shoulder poison, so we want to keep our shoulders down and back. So here we’re going to get up onto our elbow. Really focusing on bracing our abs, we’re doing almost like an old school sit up and getting up onto our elbow. So eyes on the shoe, maintaining balance and I’ve got my eyes fixated on that and I’m on up on to my elbow. So you can see that I’ve got a relatively big chest. I really want to open up my chest and get my shoulder as far away from my ear as possible. You’ll see that as I’m holding this shoe up my shoulder isn’t around my ear. I’m creating space between my ears and my shoulders. So I’ve got nice straight lines. If you can see me wiggling my left fingers over here, I’m going to push up onto my left hand and I’m going to corkscrew my arm so that I can peel my shoulder away from my ears again. So I’m not in this position here where I’m sunk down and my spine is flexed and my knees are bent or my left knee is bent. I’m going to lock out, push my shoulder away, make sure I’ve got a good grip and again keep my eyes on my shoe as my arm stays vertical. From here I’m going to lift my hips up and then bring my





leg through. So hips up. Leg goes through. And now I can adjust my legs so that I can get into a half-kneeling position. So from here, my eyes are on my shoe. And I’m going to be squeezing my shoulder blades together again a lot of upper back work. When you grab your kettlebell and you’re in this position here you’ll see that your upper back really lights up and you can get a lot of good postural work and really open up your thoracic spine in this position. So you’ll see where my foot is in relation to my other foot, so my left foot in relation to my right foot, I’m bracing my abs nice and tight. And then from here I’m gonna tighten up, push my hips back and get into a half kneeling position. So my elbows away from my ear, my abs are nice and tight and I’ll fix myself so I’m facing you guys and my hips are square to you guys. Now you don’t have to take your eyes onto the bell when you get into this position, you can look straight forward. From here I’m going to stand up, still have the shoe balance on my fist. That means my wrist is still staying straight, my arm isn’t falling forward or back, I’m staying nice and straight, Shoulder down and away. And now I’m gonna get down pretty much the same way that I got up. So if you watch me here I’m gonna take a step back with my left. I’m gonna lunge back and put my knee down. Now this one’s pretty important. I’m gonna windshield wiper my left leg like that. What that does is that it opens up my hips, which allows my spine room to move. So I’ll push my hips back like this, and then drop my hand back and put it down. Eyes on the bell now because I’m in a horizontal position. Squeezing my shoulder blades together and then I’m going to sweep my leg through and end up on my bum. So now I’m on my rear end. I’m peeling my shoulder blade away. My shoulder is as far away from my ear as possible. Opening up my chest, again maintaining a big chest. I’m gonna drop to my elbow. Stay nice and tall squeezing the shoulder blade and then drop to my back and now I’m back to that start position.

So I’m going to give you the exact same angle but on my left side so you can kinda see what my arm is doing. So I’ll take my shoe down. Switch over to my left. And you can mimic or take a look at what my right hand is doing.

So you can see you how I’m set up here. I have my left knee bent the shoe is on my left side. Trying to maintain balance and my right arm is at a 45 degree angle to my body. So I’m bracing my abs nice and tight and I’m going to start off by getting up onto my elbow with my eyes on my shoe, which would be my kettlebell, my hand’s gonna go down. I’m going to elevate up onto my hand keeping my shoulder as far away from my ear as possible. So I’m actually going to corkscrew, so you’ll notice how I turn my hand open and that peels my shoulder away from my ear. My eyes are still on my shoe because I have to maintain balance. From here, lifting up and sweeping my leg through and adjusting my knee. So my eyes are still on the shoe and then from here I can take my eyes off as I get into a half-kneeling position. And now I’m facing you guys. I’m going to adjust my legs and fully stand up. You can see that my shoulder is away from my ear, my bicep is in line with my ear as well, shoulders down and back. I’m going to step back with my right leg now. Down into that half kneeling position. Now I’m going to windshield wiper my leg, open up my hips so that I can get back down. Eyes are going to end up on that shoe again, squeezing my shoulder blades together, opening up. I’m going to sweep my leg through and down. Notice how again, my shoulder is as far away from my





ear as possible. I’m going to drop down to my elbow, opening up my chest, now I’m going to go to my back. And I’m back to where I started from.

And that’s how you do a proper get up. Now what I’d like you to do is practice that with your shoe and I want you, once you can do three reps on each side, with just your shoe, you’ll be ready to move in to using a kettlebell and then I’ll take you into the next lesson where we’re actually using a kettlebell.

GET UP PART 2

Ok so by now you probably, you must have been able to do get ups doing them with your shoe, you should be able to do 3 in a row on each side without dropping that shoe. That will take you to the level of being able to use a light kettlebell, your beginner kettlebell weight. So I’ve got a light kettlebell here and I’m going to take you through the get up on how we’re actually going to set up through a full get up. So first thing you’re going to do is bring your kettlebell to the ground, obviously it’s going to stay there. You’re going to lie down beside it into the fetal position, where the bell is pretty much lined up with your belly button. I’m going to lie down beside my bell, into the fetal position and I’m going to grab it with the arm I’m going to be working with. So I’m going to lie down on my right side if I want to start with my right when I’m doing my get up. I’m going to grab the bell with my right arm and pull it in my left and then lie down. So just like that.

Next thing you’re going to do is let go with your left arm really maintain a straight wrist. So you’ll notice when I’m grabbing my bell my wrist isn’t cocked back like that, if you can see the flexion in my wrist. I wanna set it up so that my wrist is nice and straight. From there using your working arm you’re gonna floor press the bell up. So I’m bracing my abs nice and tight and pressing the bell up. The reason why we’re floor pressing the bell up and not using two hands like we used to is because we want to be able to fire our lat and engage our lat. And that’s what the floor press is able to do. Again, at the beginning at the exercise I talk a lot about using our lats as a shelf. That’s exactly what a floor press does, it allows us to engage our lats and really create that stability there. So I’m bracing my abs nice and tight in this position here, and then we’re gonna go through the exact same motion on getting up. So I’ve got my elbow down, I’m gonna brace my abs, start with big chest, and go up to my elbow, squeezing my shoulder blades together and then from here I’m going up on my hand. Remember you wanna peel or corkscrew your shoulder away from your ear, opening up your chest. Then I’m going to bridge and bring my foot through and adjust my stance so that I’m nice and tight, opening up and then from here straight up and fully stand. So I’ve got that bell over top now. Same principles here; the bell is behind my body, my arm is in line with the rest of my body I’m nice and tight, my shoulder is away from my ear and we’re gonna get down the exact same way. I’m gonna step back with my left, drop my knee down, windshield wiper my leg so that I open my hips. As I push my hips back my hand is gonna come to the ground and now I’ve gotta keep my eyes on the bell as I bring it through. Wherever your eyes go is where the bell is gonna go. So I’ve got my eyes





fixated on that bell and I’m going to swing or sweep my leg through and end up on my bum. Shoulders away from my ears, so I don’t want my shoulder up here by my ear, I’m gonna pull it away, maintaining a big chest, dropping to my elbow, squeezing my shoulder blades together and then down on to my back. And from here grab it with two hands, bring it down under control, back into the fetal position. Now we want to be able to get that bell over to the other side so we’re going to do what’s called a half moon. I’m gonna take that bell and grab it by the horns and just slide it across over to the other side. If you’ve got room then you can just get up and turn over to the other side. It’s as easy as that as well.

Now we’re gonna do the get up on the left. You’ve got the same angles so you can see what my free arm is doing on my right side but I’ll be doing the get up on my left. Exact same thing I’m gonna get into that fetal position, pull the bell in, set myself up. Free hand goes down, floor press the bell up to engage my lat. Bracing my abs, elbow is on the ground. Stay nice and tight. Now I’m gonna go big chest, bring the bell up keeping my eyes fixated on the bell. Right up to my elbow. Nice and tight. Opening my chest up, I want my shoulders as far away from my ear as I can get it. Palm goes down. From here I’m going to push up on my hand. And I’m corkscrewing my arm away from my ears so that I’m not in this position here, a weak position. My spine is going to stay straight and my shoulder is far away from my ear as possible. Then I’m gonna bridge up and bring my leg through. Nice and tight here, maintaining it. Eyes on the bell. Wherever my eyes go is where the bell goes. Here I’m gonna go into half kneeling and now I’m going to adjust. I’m facing you now so you can see the alignment I’ve got. My shoulder is away from my ear again. In that lunge position I’m straight up. Abs are nice and tight. Maintaining tension in my abs and in my upper back, I’m gonna step back, windshield wiper my leg now. Open up my leg a little bit. Eyes are gonna go fixated on the bell. As I bring my hand down and flex at the hip. Elbow is staying locked. You can see my wrist is nice and straight. I’m not moving my wrist at all. My hand can stay open and can rest there, so I’m nice and comfortable in this position. From here I’m peeling my shoulder back. I’m gonna bring my leg through and back onto my rear end. And then down to my elbow. Nice and tight, and then on to my back. My hand is gonna come over to support. Knees together, bell goes down, back down into the fetal position. And that’s how you do a get up. The hardstyle way.

Now there’s a few changes. We used to do a high bridge really forcing our glutes up nice and high. We’ve kinda eliminated that. And really tried to simplify the movement so other people can start to master it and start to get it. This is a skill again, much like the swing, that needs to be practiced. But once you are able to understand how to move properly, using the get up as one of your tools then you can really focus on using a heavier bell and your upper back and your shoulders will get a lot stronger.So that’s the get up and we’ll move into the next get up now which is the squat.





GOBLET SQUAT

Ok our second grinding exercise we’re going to talk about is the goblet squat. You’ll see that I’m doing my grinds without my shoes on because I really want to stay grounded and I really don’t want anything between my feet and the floor, because I really want that biofeedback that I can get from my feet. So talking about the squat. The squat, unlike the traditional barbell squat where you’ve got the bar on your back, really occurs between your knees. It’s not so much pushing your hips back and getting into this position here, it’s more or less keeping your spine straight and focusing on squatting deep into a hole. So what I want you to think about is standing over top of a hole, and you want to get your body into that hole, so you’re almost in a cylinder as you bring yourself down. So the squat is going to occur between your knees, not so much with your hips driving back or leaning forward or having an excessive amount of weight on your back. With the goblet squat or even with a kettlebell front squat where you’ve got it in the rack position, because the weight is in front it’s going to involve a lot more abdominal work and you’ll be able to be a lot more mobile in your hips because of where the weight is. So what you want to practice when you’re doing a squat is really focusing on thinking about a string that goes from the top of your spine all the way through the ceiling. That’s how you’re going to move. You’re going to move through that cylinder. So if you can you imagine me having a kettlebell out in front of me, I’m gonna drop down and open my knees as I start to come down into that squat position. As I said before, the squat kinda occurs in between my knees. My spine is nice and straight and I’m dropping my hips back and from there I’m squeezing my shoulder blades and keeping my glutes nice and tight at that top position. So you’re still going to power breathe, you’re still going to maintain tension at the top. If you remember from our swing exercise, tension is going to stay nice and tight at the top, and then you’re just releasing tension in your hips and your knees as you bring yourself down but the tension is going to stay in your abdomen and your upper body.

For example, I’ll get my kettlebell here. I’m going to grab it by the goblet position. And I’m going to start off in that tense position and I’m going to take a deep breath and push it right down into my diaphragm and into my abdomen. And so when you’re taking that deep power breath you really want to think about yourself as a tire. And the valve in the tire is your tongue pushed up against your mouth and once you let go of that valve all the air is going to seep out so you only want air to seep out a little bit at a time. So when I drive that breath through I’ve got my tongue pushed to the roof of my mouth and I’m going to seep a little bit of air out as I come down. So you see how the squat occurs between my knees. My butt isn’t too far back and then from here, the string pulling me up to the top of the ceiling. And coming back to tense.

So if I go from the side you’ll see how straight my spine is when I do this. Take my breath. Drop between my knees. Nice and tight. And follow through. So on that follow through, if I’m grabbing that kettlebell, I’m squeezing my shoulder blades together, my lats are nice and fired so I’ve got that good shelf. I’m gripping the bell with my hands so that I’m firing my upper body. The only parts that are moving are my hips, my knees and





my ankles. So there’s only a bit of flexion occurring in all three of those joints. Mainly in my knees and my hips. And then I’m driving myself up.

If you’re going to do this in the rack position, so if you’re doing a traditional kettlebell squat, or if you have double kettlebells, you can have two kettlebells in the rack position; what you’re going to do first is clean the bell up into that rack. So I’ve got the kettlebell in the rack now, and I’m going to take one hand and bring it over top. And now I can perform my front squat. Nice and braced. Remember the squat occurs between my knees. It’s not like a back squat where you drive your hips back. Nice and tight. Back stays nice and straight. And from here, top of the head and making sure that you’re finishing in that rooted position where your abs are nice and tight.

So that’s how you do a kettlebell front squat. Remember that you’ve got to maintain tension all the way through, especially for these grinds. You really want to focus on minimizing the amount of joints that are being used. Only use the ones that you are supposed to be using. In the squat it’s your hips, knees and ankles. And notice how the spine is always going to stay straight. You’re not going to flex forward. There’s no excessive movement. Go as far as your body will allow you to go. As you start to practice, and get better at the movement, you will be able to get deeper. And that’s how you do a front squat.

MILITARY PRESS

Ok so I’ve saved the best for last. This is my favourite kettlebell exercise. Which it wasn’t before because this is the kettlebell exercise that I really suck at. But it’s the one that I’m happy to master. The one that I really wanna focus on doing the best at. It’s probably one of the best exercises that you can use for functional strength. It’s very functional. Very much apart of everyday life, to be able to lift stuff up over your head. This kettlebell military press is one of the best ways for you to be able to learn how to do that.

Now kettlebell military press, yes it occurs in your shoulder and yes you are taking the kettlebell up over top of your head, but it is very much a full body exercise. If you remember from the ballistic portion of our training video here in the essentials DVD, I said that your press is only going to be as good as your clean. And so when you’re cleaning the kettlebell, the press really starts from that point where the kettlebell impacts your body and you start to create tension. Because that tension that you create as you get that kettlebell into the rack position is going to be transferred into the press as you push it overhead. Any time that you leak energy, any time that excessive joints are moving in that one position, you are going to leak energy and your press is not going to be as strong. And so that clean is of upmost importance when you bring that kettlebell into the rack position when you’re pressing.

Now I’m going to show you the wrong way to do it first and then I’m going to show you the right way. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is to not treat the kettlebell





press as a full body exercise. And so what they’ll do is they’ll clean it, and then they’ll move around and try to shimmy their way around the bell to bring it up. Now that was all shoulder. That was not full body. And you could see that as I pressed it up, my entire body was contorting around that bell, leaking energy to just be able to get that bell up. Now that’s very strenuous on your shoulder and it’s not something you want to do on a regular basis, only because you’ll end up hurting yourself. Remember kettlebell training is not about chasing reps. It’s not about going after numbers. It is about creating tension and understanding how to master tension, to be able to get heavy objects or heavy things over top of your head.

So for the kettlebell press, you are going to clean the bell, get into the rack position, and start that press from the rack position where you’re creating tension as the bell impacts your body. From there you’re gonna focus on your lat of the working arm. Really contracting that lat using it as a shelf to push your body away from the bell. Not so much push the bell up towards the ceiling, but imagine if you were doing a one-arm handstand pushup, you are pushing your body away from the floor. You are pushing your body away from the bell. What that does or being able to understand that concept, what that does is that it keeps your shoulder down into its socket, away from your ear. So it turns it into, it creates a situation where the kettlebell becomes a part of your body and not so much as a separate implement. Now when you lock that bell up over top of your head, you’ll notice that when I lock it out, the bell is going to be behind my body. It’s not going to be out in front. It’s not going to be way, way far back where I’m in hyperextension. I’m going to be straight up and down. My arm is going to be vertical but the bell is going to be slightly behind me. I’m gonna hold it there and from there we’re going to imagine that we’re doing the one-arm chin-up on the way down.

Now you’ll see me while I’m doing this, this is a 30lb kb, so it’s not very heavy, at least not for me, so I can talk through this and still maintain a certain amount of tension. When we get into pressing heavier bells, we don’t want to be talking, we don’t want to be casually breathing through it. But for all intensive purposes so that I can teach you how to do this properly, I will talk you through it. I may not have as much tension in my body as I should but that will help me teach you how to do this properly.

Remember it all starts with the clean. On that impact you’re gonna make sure that you’ve got all that tension built up in your body. And so from this position here my quads are contracted, my abs are contracted, my glutes are nice and tight. I literally want to imagine that somebody is about to punch me in the stomach. Remember how I was saying before that my lat on the working arm will be contracted as well. And I even want to make a fist with this arm to be able to maintain tension throughout the rest of my body. I’m gonna power breathe, push my breath down into my abdomen, and then from here, focusing on pushing my body away from the bell. And you’ll see how my shoulder did not come up. I’ve got lots of tension so I’ve got a lot of shake going on. And then imagine that you’re doing a one-arm chin-up and pull that bell back down. Same thing, going up, squeezing the bell handle nice and tight.





Always thinking about the lat. The lat is almost the prime synergist or the prime mover. You are creating a shelf with the lat to be able to drive the kettlebell up over top of your head. That way you can really protect your shoulder. I have a very bad right shoulder and I PR’d with a 36kg kettlebell, pushing that over my head, that’s about half my body weight, by just focusing on my lat and using my lat as a shelf.

So on the right side, so you can see a different angle of how I’m doing this. Remember it’s only as good as your clean, so we’re going to brace, not leak energy. I’ve got a great, great tight grip on this kettlebell. That will create a radiating energy or radiating tension through my entire body. Bracing my abs, focusing on pushing the bell away from my body. Or pushing my body away from the bell. And then doing a one-arm chin-up to bring it back. That’s all lat work, I hardly feel any shoulder at all.

And so you notice when I’m doing that, I’m taking the energy from the ground it’s coming up into my feet, into the bell. I’m not shimmy shaking my hips. My abs are nice and tight so I’m not leaking any energy. I’m imagining that I’m doing a one-arm handstand pushup where I am pushing my body away from the bell itself and not pushing the bell away from me. So the bell is part of your body and you are going to push your body away from it. Much like when you are squatting, you are pushing the floor away from your body.

And that’s how you do a one-arm kettlebell military press. Really, this is all about mastering tension. It’s about practicing and not working out. Focus on mastering the skills so that you can really take your fat loss and your strength training to the next level. This is the way to get strong. Again practice. Don’t workout. And think strength first.





About the AuthorIf you recall back to your grade school days…

Playing out in the school yard, there was that one fat kid, who, when the recess bell rang and everyone had to get back to class, always ended up last in line, out of breath, sweat pouring down his forehead from the 40 foot sprint from the sandbox to the classroom door.

That was Chris Lopez.

Now, fast forward almost 30 years and Chris is one of the most sought after experts in the field of kettlebell fat loss training.

Chris is a 13 year veteran in the fitness and strength & conditioning field getting certified as a personal trainer while completing his Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Kinetics from the University of Guelph back in 2000.

He is now an NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, The 1st Certified Turbulence Trainer and one of only two Level 2 StrongFirst Girya (SFG2) Kettlebell Instructors in all of Canada.

Chris, a former varsity volleyball player, is also an assistant coach with the Canadian National Beach Volleyball Team and a strength & conditioning consultant with Team Ontario Volleyball and the head strength & conditioning coach for the Volleyball Canada Centre of Excellence in Toronto.

These days, Chris can be found in various downtown espresso shops, listening to ‘90s hip hop in the park while training with kettlebells or with his wife carting their 5 kids around on his Opafiet (dutch for “Grandpa bike”) through the streets of downtown Toronto.

You can also find Chris on the internet at KettlebellWorkouts.com and writing for his personal blog at FitAndBusyDad.com .

If it wasn’t for the days when his mom would purposely “sauce up” the rice on his dinner plate with bacon fat to make him “healthier”, Chris probably wouldn’t have the drive today to want to get anyone in shape - let alone himself.



http://kettlebellworkouts.com/

http://kettlebellworkouts.com/

http://fitandbusydad.com/

http://fitandbusydad.com/



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