Kettlebell Jerk Tutorial

30 04 2012

Over the last few posts I’ve been talking about the Kettlebell Clean which for those in the world of Kettlebell Sport serves as a precursor to this, the kettlebell jerk.

Jerks.

What a fantastic lift.

It is one of my all time favourite lifts. In fact that gives me an idea for a future post, a top ten of my favourite kettlebell lifts……
Anyway before I go off on a tangent, lets look at the Jerk and it’s component parts.

First, what is a Jerk and how is it different to a press?

When I teach a kettlebell workshop, or if you follow my Workshop series, I have the Jerk as the last step in a continuum. The continuum opens with the “Hard Style” or high tension military press, then relaxes into a Push Press and the more relaxed and efficient military press techniques untill finally we get to the Jerk.

On one end of the continuum all the strength and power comes from the upper torso, particularly the upper chest, shoulder and triceps.
As we move along the continuum we are integrating more and more of the body, adding in more and more potential for force production and power, assuming of course all the links in the chain are working right.

If we take a strict press and say that 100% of the force is generated by the upper torso. We can say that a push press, with its added leg drive, spreads the load to maybe 50% upper and 50% lower body. The Jerk then is closer to 80% lower body with the arm and shoulder merely finishing the lift.

Good news then for beaten up idiots like myself who have recurring nagging injuries around the shoulders.
Good news also if you’re involved in any sport that requires the integration of the entire body to generate force to be expressed by the upper body (think throwing, punching, batting etc…)

So how does it work?
Well in the Level 3 Kettlebell manual where the Jerk is detailed it takes over 1500 words and 26 photographs over 6 pages to give the full overview. If you think I’m repeating all that here….well….

Level 3 Kettlebell Manual - Snatch & Jerk

So what I have done is made a video. In fact it’s two videos, part one is 10 minutes detailing the launch section of the Jerk, part 2 is another 10 minutes detailing the Lockout, drop and breath.

Yes, the Jerk is that technical.

But it is well worth the effort, especially if you’re a combat athlete or any athlete that requires full body coordinated strength and power.

So without further ado, here’s part 1:

And here’s part 2:

Using the Jerk in your training is highly dependent on your training goals. I love heavy jerks for multiple sets of low reps for power.
I also hate doing but really appreciate higher rep sets for the endurance factor. They’ll do more for your ability to hold a high guard and hit hard than any amount of push ups.

Precede each jerk with a clean and you’re now doing the best lift ever, the clean and jerk or “Long Cycle” as it’s known in the kettlebell world.
Long Cycle truly is a total body lift. The posterior chain does the Clean, the anterior chain does the Jerk while the heart and lungs pick up the slack.
One moderately weighted bell is all you need to smoke your cardio with Long cycle, one or a pair of heavier bells will develop strength and power of mind and spirit.

Or they’ll make you simply hate life.

Take your time with this, learn it slow, develop it, nurture it and it will reward you.

Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com


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Want vs Need

25 04 2012

Strange how things seem to run in themes.

This week, and it’s only Wednesday, I’ve been talking a lot with various people about doing what they need to do as opposed to what they want to do.

The most common occurrence of this is undoubtedly eating.
The second is a toss up between exercise selection/intensity/rest
The third is stretching (yes, I’m guilty of this one…)

We all love certain things. The things we like, we do the most.
Some things we hate, these things we tend to avoid.

Here’s the problem:
I love cake.
I love training hard

I dislike stretching
I dislike rest

If I simply ate cake, trained hard, never stretched and never took time away from training, what do you think would happen?

Thats right. I’d look and feel like the majority of commercial gym members. I’d be soft, weak, over tired and tighter than Silk Spectre’s outfit.

In other words, not the person I aim to be, which is strong, mobile, athletic and with enough energy to play with my kids and when they go to bed exhausted, play with my wife.

To do this I have to realise that my love of Pastries, Tea Brack (an Irish thing, google it) and Cheese cake will have an inverse effect on my love of training. I have to decide which is more important, which do I need to have the most in order to get what I want.

I have to realise that taking a back week or having a few days off entirely is good for me, the body needs rest in order to repair. And that some of this rest time can be spent stretching.
I need to do these things in order to be the person I want to be.

This goes for all of us, regardless of what our end goals may be.

If you’re attending the gym to lose fat but then immediately nip round the corner after training for a Latte and Blueberry muffin (yum…), are you really doing yourself a favour?
Short answer is no.

Protein shakes taste horrible, very few people actually enjoy drinking them, yet if you replaced your Latte & Muffin with a shake, drink something your body needs as opposed to wants, you will find your progress starts to move forward.

Look back at what you did in the gym. Did you use the leg press instead of the squat rack? Why? Because you like it more than having a bar on your back crushing you?
Suck it up, the leg press is a very poor substitute. Start squatting and you’ll see muscle appearing and fat melting. Stick to the leg press and you’ll see you’re knees coming towards your face……

What we want is often at odds to what we need.

Your best bet is to make list. One of my old coaches calls it the Black & White mirror.

Get a page and draw a line vertically down the middle. Put all the things you do that are good for you on one side of the page and all the things that are bad for you on the other side.
Now get to work on eliminating most of the bad stuff and improving the good, then increase the amount of good stuff on your list.
My list recently had “Not stretching enough” on the bad side, that has since been scrubbed out and on the good side we now see “TV stretching every evening”
My hips and old injuries are very thankful for this, even though I dislike doing it.

On my bad side was “Not getting enough calories to reach my training goals” that has been scrubbed out and on the good side you’ll see “Stocked up on porridge and protein powder”
I add protein to my porridge in the morning and I add porridge to my protein after training. No, it’s not enjoyable but who cares? My workouts are harder and faster and my waistline in smaller. Result.

Want vs Need.

Take a few minutes to decide which is more important.

Dave
www.wg-fit.com 


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Kettlebell Clean Tutorial Parts 3 & 4

23 04 2012

Here are the last two presentations covering the Kettlebell Clean technique.

If you missed the previous posts CLICK HERE for part I and HERE for part II

Part I covered the basic technique. Part II looked at the bottom portion and the breathing, this post looks at tightening the clean and also the top section.

We start with the Bottoms Up Clean.
The BUC is not just a party trick it is a valid training lift, you see being able to swing the bell up and catch it in an upside down (bottoms up) position requires mental focus, a strong grip and efficient technique.
I often find that those struggling to get the proper clean technique miraculously get it after a few of these.

Aside from the self correction benefits there are other advantages to this lift, especially for our combat athletes.
A common issue with the combat athletes is wrist pain, often from miss timing a strike on the heavy bag or worse hitting with a bent wrist. The stability and strength developed by the bottoms up clean is a huge boon to any fighter wanting to injury proof themselves.
Add a press onto the lift and you’ll stabilise the wrist further while integrating it with shoulder and core stability.

Have a look at the video:

We then move to the fourth clip in the series, dead start and hang cleans.
These are our upper back developers, these don;t rely on the hip to generate power but instead rely on the core and back to do the work. Make these a regular occurrence in your training and just watch your traps grow.

We finish with a favourite, the Alternating Hang Clean, I’ll not go into detail, watch the video and try it for yourself:

Regards

Dave

www.wg-fit.com


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Kettlebell Clean Tutorial Part 2

22 04 2012

This is the second part of the series covering the Kettlebell Clean.

If you missed part one CLICK HERE, better yet, subscribe to our weekly email updates and you’ll never miss anything again…..!

Anyhow, here’s part 2:

In this section we look in more detail at the bottom section of the clean and the breathing.
As kettlebells are often used for high rep sets, especially if you’re competing in Kettlebell Sport or looking to develop your work capacity, you need to get your technique dialled in tight in order to maintain good form and manage fatigue.
This drill is one used commonly by the Kettlebell Sports world to develop several attributes that allow them to throw heavy bells around with almost no effort for hundreds of reps.
Even if you don’t intend to work high rep sets and instead wish to play with heavy bells for low rep power sets, you still need efficient technique. The drill covered here is a great assistance drill regardless of your training goals.

Between each clean you will perform a number of “lazy” swings, each with a breath at the back of the swing and at the top. After the prescribed number you finish with a clean using the exact same swing and breath pattern, simply finishing the lift off with a third breath.

Why so many breaths?
Simple, multiple exhalations mean multiple in breaths which means more oxygen intake and more endurance while maintaining a lower heart rate.
Don’t be overly concerned with the in breaths, if you exhale hard you have no other option but to inhale. Allow the body to inhale naturally, you will reflexively inhale much deeper than if you tried with conscious effort.

I will say, this method is best for endurance based lifting, even with the heavier bells. If I’m lifting simply for power and low reps with very heavy bells I exhale a maximum of twice, top and bottom, sometimes only at the top.

Done after your training sets this drill is great for drilling in technique, developing a tenacious grip and building the cardio.
Watch the video for full details then go and have a play:

More on the Clean and other techniques can be found in the Kettlebell Lifting Manuals:
Level 2 Kettlebell Lifting Manual

Regards
Dave
www.wg-fit.com

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Kettlebell Clean Tutorial – Part 1

20 04 2012

The Kettlebell Clean is an essential tool in your tool box.

While it is a relatively simple movement it does have a long learning curve for many. When I think back to almost ten years ago when i was first learning it I remember banged up wrists, torn calluses and just untidy technique. It took me a while to get it right and even to this day I’m still learning and improving.

This tutorial then is part one of a series. Over the series I hope to give you all the tools to take your clean from a horribly painful experience to a wonderfully painful experience. Part one starts at the beginning and contains the most important info, subsequent parts will introduce training drills to refine the clean or to emphasise certain aspects.

Here’s the video or part 1:

 

 

If you enjoyed that, you’ll find the clean along with other techniques described and illustrated in the Level 2 kettlebell manual:

Level 2 Kettlebell Lifting Manual

Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com


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The Importance of Coaching vs Instructing

18 04 2012

erm.....

An interesting conversation took place here the other day with one of my lads.

He’d just finished his training and we were chatting about the progress he’d made. He commented that it was down to simply following a program.

And to a large degree he’s correct, good programming is vital to success in any athletic endeavour. But in his particular case and in many other people’s case, it’s not the whole truth.

When he joined me he was already following a training program set out by an online coach and simply asked if he could use my facility to train out of, things hadn’t worked out well at the last place he was using.
I agreed and pretty much left him to it. He followed his program religiously and made great progress. But it could have been better.

Since then he’s switched to training directly under me. No, in his chosen sport my programming skills are probably not as good as the specialists he was consulting online, but there is one major difference.

I am there, watching.

Not only that but I can judge what days to push forwards and what days to back off. I can adjust the training on the fly as needed.
And I can converse with him between sets and work out what adjustments need to be made in order to best advance him as an individual. These could be technique issues or weak/imbalanced areas specific to him.

In other words, he receives “coaching”, where as previously he only received “training”
The difference is crucial.

A coach is there, always there.
A good coach knows his athletes as well as or often better than they know themselves.
A good coach knows as soon as his athlete steps onto the floor where he is mentally and physically, before anything more than “hello” has been said.
A good coach can pick out an athletes weak points and eliminate them.

A “trainer” can’t do this. Nor can the vast majority of fitness instructors.

If you are training for something, be it athleticism, physique or sport, ensure you search out a coach, someone who doesn’t just hand you a workout, no matter if it’s the perfect program or not. But find someone who can get in your head, someone who can work out what makes you tick and can manipulate you to tick more efficiently.

If you are a fitness instructor/trainer whatever. Endeavour to learn how your athletes think. Always be assessing.

There’s a lot of internet chatter about assessments, especially since the whole FMS thing exploded onto the scene. But in Wild Geese I am assessing you from the minute you enter the building to the minute you leave.
Each and every movement, each facial expression, the intonation and construction of your sentences when you speak, the way you stand, walk, the look in your eye. All these tell a story.
These are all things a coach should be looking for, should be reading and taking note of.
Each tiny element helps build a story. A coach can read the story and workout how best to steer it.

The difference in an athlete’s success/failure isn’t always the programming. The best program in the world is no use if the athlete can’t implement it on those occasions where life gets in the way.

Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com 


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TV Stretching – How to work flexibility into your daily routine

8 04 2012

Stretching is dull.

I’d rather do my accounts than stretch.

I’d rather watch Sex and the City than stretch (actually that’s a lie, nothing is as bad as sex and the bloody city!)

But stretching is a necessary evil.

Without stretching regularly I wouldn’t be able to move. My hips and low back would become a single fused unit. My hamstrings would be like violin strings and my quads could be used to break bricks on.
You see I lift. A lot.
I also cycle every day.
I am on my feet from the minute I awake and leave for work to when I eventually get home and get the kids to bed.

A few days of this and I can feel things starting to get creaky, old injuries start nagging and mornings become a stiff and painful effort.

So I stretch.

Over the years I’ve done my homework and looked to find more pleasurable ways of doing this. I dropped all stretching from my warm up routines and instead use mobility drills and calisthenics. After training I use a simplified Yoga sequence.
These are movement based and therefore interesting to do.

But one thing I could never work out was how to do my static stretching, which with my injury history and especially as I age is getting gradually more and more important.
But finally I’ve found that spoonful of sugar.

I call it TV stretching.

It goes like this:
For years I always said NEVER stretch from cold, always always always warm up first.
That is still good advice, especially if you are looking to develop a good stretch.

But I’m not looking to build a great stretch, I’m looking more at preventing loss of movement. Some guys call it “compensation” rather than stretching, and this is a fitting term. I use stretching to compensate for the tension built up by heavy and/or repetitive lifting.

To do this requires a calm and patient approach. So I save it until the very end of my day, I certainly don’t do it in the charged atmosphere of the gym.
Most evenings after the family are in bed and nothing more needs done that day I scroll through the TV listings looking for the least worst option and I get on the floor.

This last hour of my day before retiring for the night is TV Stretching time.

I get into whatever stretch I need, go to the point of mild discomfort and chill out. My attention is on the TV, not the stretch, so it doesn’t seem too bad. As the discomfort eases, I’ll go a touch deeper, never to pain, only to mild discomfort.
I may hold each position for many minutes, sometimes as long as 15 minutes, or it maybe just 30 or 40 seconds. It depends on what I’m looking to achieve.

One evening I spent an entire movie on the floor stretching my glutes. The other night I opened up my hip flexors while laughing at Keith Lemon’s antics on Celebrity Juice.

I highly recommend you try it.
Standing stretches aren’t ideal, stick to floor based, seated or lying positions.

Tonight I’ll be gently pulling on my hamstrings.

Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com

 


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