Strength Training

Lately, on one of the forums I frequent, there's been a lot of talk in a thread about getting in shape.

Apparently, and this is a shock to me, because I can't always see it in the mirror- I'm a bit of an inspiration to some guys. I love it because it means I have to keep going! It bugs me a bit because I'm...just a guy, yknow? Nothing special here at all.

There's been a bit of debate recently. One of the participants is nearing completion of a degree in exercise science (I'm not recalling the exact name, but it's a general exercise and not a physical therapy specific degree). He's come down pretty hard on the kettlebell, thinking it's a horribly dangerous thing.

Now, all my reading suggests that the rate of injury among gireviks is far lower than in many lifting programs. If you ave the basics of good form and focus on that, it's safe and has done wonders for my joints. I couldn't point you to a study that supports swings as a cure for carpal, but mine is gone.

All the old issues with my heels and knees in the mornings are similarly gone, but that could be following Pavel's advice and wearing combat boot as much as anything I get directly out of swings.

Swings- this is the big thing that is causing the whole misunderstanding. The guy is thinking of a swing as... a swing. It's not. It's a "dynamic ballistic deadlift." A nice phrase I made up. Oh, there's definitely a rotational force, but it's not like a chain and ball toss at the scottish games.

All my swing force is generated from my center. Aside from grip tension (yes, there's some shoulder in this, Anastasia (my kettlebell) is floating like a 35 pound butterfly until I bring it home at the top. and that's not a shoulder joint motion- it's my upper back and shoulder muscles popping everything to completion before I pull her down again.

One thing you see often is people flipping kettlebells at the top of the swing. If you had 200 odd pounds of rotational force pulling on a tangent out at that point, you couldn't DO a flip of the KB, right?

And I've found precisely seven reports of injuries involving Turkish getups with a kettlebell. Every one of them involves dropping a KB on your chest, and they all resulted in bruising. I won't stop doing TGUs because of that, though I might take care not to try and do a getup with a KB I can't do 15 or 20 presses with!

The TGU is one of those exercises where I fail to see how you can get an injury. You can overtrain anything, but I simply cannot do a getup with a weight that's too heavy for my joints. Remember that a TGU is a static press, and doing a getup with 16 or 24 kilograms just can't be considered extreme. Very few people would tell you that a 35 pound dumbell is inherently unsafe to lift.


Now, on to strength training. A lot of my fellow travellers are in a heavy fat burning phase. I'm stepping back into one for a couple weeks to burn through part of this next 5%.

One of the common cautions, based on nothing I can find that's factual, is that if you try to lose weight fast you are going to drop muscle mass. Well, thanks to rusty over at fitnessblackbook, I've got the answer.

Resistance (or strength) training. This is where bodyweight is probably king of kings. Drop those calories and do a full bodyweight resistance program and you are golden. And hey, those bodyweight exercises are going to get a lot easier with each kilo you drop!