Later on I come to find that same person has a DVD for kettlebell training. I assume she’s gotten some instruction, I assume she doesn’t fly from the hip with kettlebell exercises that aren’t performed properly. I also assume her form and teaching cues have gotten better.

I assumed wrong, sorry Dad, sometimes I still don’t remember what happens when you assume.

Rather than get in to all the things that are wrong about this person’s kettlebell training, I’d rather address the proper way to perform some of these kettlebell exercises.

Watch the video below…

There is a lot more I can hit on going forward, but these are the basics.

-Kettlebell swings are not based off of a squat.
-The kettlebell should become an extension of your arms.
-The Kettlebell swing focuses on your posterior chain, the lower back, the glutes, the hamstrings.
-The Kettlebell swing does not focus on our anterior delts, this is not a front raise.
-You can and should practice Good Morning Stretches and Romanian Deadlifts to understand the idea of hip hinging if it’s new to you.
-Hike the kettlebell behind your hips, as you stand make sure your hips and knees come to full extension, think athletic and explosive, the kettlebell should be weightless for a brief second and the top of your swing.
-Allow gravity to assist the kettlebell back down behind your hips.
-Always start and stop in the same safe ‘short stop’ position.

I believe in being an expert at what you do. Although I love barbell training, and I believe I do it well, I don’t specialize in teaching it, so I won’t try to sell my coaching skills with the barbell to anyone.

When you step into an industry such as fitness, where everyone has a different opinion on fat loss, strength training, cardio, and the like; I believe you should be sound with your movements and understand the mechanics of what you are doing before you decide to teach it to someone (or demonstrate it on national television, or create an information product based around that type of training, without really having the knowledge.)

If you’ve never kettlebell trained before, I suggest you give a try, you’ll love it for many reasons, but I also suggest you train with someone who’s been coaching it and training it themselves for several years. (I know that doesn’t weed out all the bad seeds, but it hits most.) I suggest you ask around and get some opinions from people who train and coach regularly. And if there isn’t someone close to you, I suggest finding someone who does online coaching.

If you’re going to invest the time and the money into a fitness program, shouldn’t you be sure that you’re getting what you want, not just what you paid for?

Back to the training…

A few weeks ago, as I’ve already mentioned, I got spend some time training with Zach Even-Esh after one of our mastermind meetings. We got a lot of info on video, and this is what Zach wanted to share with you.

Let me know if you have questions below, I’ll some answers to you right away.

Also stay tuned for some Sick Strong Girls training at the Underground in the next few weeks!

I have a friend who works in health care, at a relatively high profile hospital. He emailed me the other day to tell me that he HAD to get a flu shot for work. I was surprised by his emphasis on HAD, so I called him up to verify. As it turns out his high profile employer was mandating that all employees with face-to-face interaction with patients HAD to get a flu shot within a certain period of time or their employment would be terminated.

Is that even legal? I couldn’t believe it.

Then…

I get another email from the same friend. He’s at an all day meeting with his employer. Within the email is a photo of danishes, bagels, and muffins being served for breakfast during the meeting. No fruit to be seen, no protein anywhere, just sugar and flour. Later I get the lunch update, mayo based salads served as sandwiches, chips, and cookies. Not even an apple or a simple vegetable tray.

Seriously?

I think message is twisted. Mandate flu shots but serve crap for meals. This employer, and I’m sure many more, have a lot of evaluating to do.

Let’s at least try a little bit of this the next time you host an employee meeting (which like the flu shot is also mandatory!)

The answer: Yes, unless you’re doing it all wrong.

There was a video awhile ago, with Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser demonstrating kettlebell exercises with bad form, in my opinion really bad form. And now, she’s got her very own product endorsing kettlebells and their effectiveness.

Whoa! I’m concerned.

I can’t say I’ve watched the DVD, and I probably never will unless someone sends it to me for free. What I can say is I’ve watched that demo and if the DVD is anything like the demo well then there’s a lot of work to do, and a lot of concern to be had.

You see, I could look at this in two ways. One is I’ll have plenty of people to instruct and re-train since they’ve probably been taught poor form, so I could benefit financially. On the flip side I’ve got worry about the potential loss of sales based on this DVD and if people are hurting themselves by not doing the exercises properly. People talk much more about bad experiences than they do positive ones, and they talk about it a lot faster.

It could either way. But here’s my big question…

Didn’t NordicTrack (the company promoting the DVD) recognize the ridicule Jillian Michaels received from her poor display? And if they did, what are they thinking? And if they didn’t, again what are they thinking. I guess her name is big enough and recognized enough that it’s not going to matter. Well it should. Integrity should matter.

Does it? Apparently not.

Below I go over a simple three exercise lower body complex, using kettlebells and bodyweight. (You’ll see a more advanced one in a few days.)

Again, depending on fitness levels this is either going to be someone’s workout for the day, or this will be a portion of someone’s workout.

Let me know what you think!

I’d love to hear yours…

I’ll share mine with you as well.

As a kid, we played outside. Never were we allowed to sit a watch TV for hours on end. We also had chores that needed to be done. From about 11 to 17 I played sports. My favorite sport was swimming, I would swim lap after lap after lap until I had to get out of the pool. I was awesome at the backstroke, then one meet didn’t go so well, I counted the flags wrong I crashed head first into the wall, practically knocked myself out in the water, and well mentally couldn’t get over it, and never swam quite so well again.

I also played soccer, but we didn’t always have a girls team, a group of us got to play on the boys team for a year, but in terms of degrading us, they made a special period for us (that didn’t really count toward the game) That didn’t go over too well, and didn’t last more than a season. We finally got a girls team my senior year, we weren’t great but we were good enough for a first year team. That was a memorable experience, a charter member. After college I was a bartender for a bit, it was always strange mixing up a drink for my high school soccer coach.

Lastly, I was on the track and field team all through high school. I threw discus and ran 110 hurdles, that’s a combination of two events for sure. I wasn’t awesome but I was good enough.

When I got to college, swimming was always on my mind, but I never went after it, looking back I probably should have. Instead, I got a little lazy, and the most exercise I ever did was the 3 whole classes I had to take to fulfill my PE requirements. Reassuring I know, coming from someone who wants every woman to feel confident and empowered by their fitness capabilities.

After college, I battled with myself for about a year over some minor eating disorders, and my new addiction to running (perhaps this is why I dislike it so much now.) At my 5’10″ frame I was a whopping 155, anorexic and almost frail. I encountered some other problems along the way, but slowly and thankfully shifted out of that mindset and into a much healthier lifestyle. There were a lot of ups and downs to overcome and conquer, but once I realized the importance I knew I had to stick with it, that and I wanted to.

Enter real strength training for the first time in my life. (Because all the strength training I did in high school was bogus at best, with no program to follow and no goals in mind, I wasn’t educated at the time.)

I love this stuff, I would give up strength training for anything at this point in my life. When I finally started training the right way, I saw amazing transformations. I was strong, I was lean, I was realizing what it was really like to be fit as an adult. It wasn’t about crazy fad diets and long cardio.

Combination full body movements, paired with other combination full body movements, for effective and quick workouts that not only make me stronger and leaner, but also allow me to skip traditional cardio workouts. Have I mentioned that I love this stuff! (You will too if you don’t already, I promise.)

I didn’t get in to every detail but I will as time moves along, you’ll hear about all of my mistakes, what my workouts are like now, they crazy fad diets I’ve tried, the success of well balanced nutrition, the confidence that strength training brings to you, and so much more.

Tell me what your fitness story has been like.

What do you struggle with?

What has been the key to your current success?

Where do you want to improve?

Together, we’ll get there and stay there.

This is the bonus workout on my new DVD.

Not really, just a funny bloopers my videographer, Paul put together!

In all seriousness I’m wrapping things up with the cover design for the DVD and it will be available shortly for purchase. It’s a great intro DVD covering the basic how-tos of Kettlebell training. I’ll get all the specifics to you very soon!

I was in Louisville all last week. I made a few posts to the site here, but something happened to them along the way, maybe they got lost in West Virginia. Anyway, just wanted to give you a heads up on some changes that are coming.

While I was in Louisville I got to hang out with my good friend Zach Even-Esh, now Zach really is a good friend, he’s not one of those guys I call a good friend just to stand out, he really truly is. Zach and I got to talking about business and before I know it I’m standing in front of my flip on top of a parking garage throwing around kettlebells. Pretty standard for Zach.

We filmed a bunch of videos, I’ll start posting them here every few days. You’re gonna love what we put together.

In Louisville, I also spent a lot of time with Holly Rigsby, we filmed my second DVD and did a few posts for her FYMs and also for Workout Muse. Good stuff!

My main purpose for being in Louisville though was business. I had a two day mastermind meeting, then a two day seminar on bootcamps, and we ended with a one day Kettlebell Athletics certification.

Crazy busy!

As a result of all that, I’m making some changes to the blog, soon it’ll have a whole new look, I’m sure you’ll love it.

Lots of training about to come your way.

I hope you leave some comments, and tell me what you want to see. Let me know what I can help you with.

I was in my kitchen making a cup of coffee. She asked for some information that I had to look up. I asked her to hold on as I quickly walked up the two flights of stairs to my attic office. She said no problem.

Of course after I gave her the info, she then asked me for more info, this time I had to ask her to hold on as I quickly walked down the same two flights to get back to the piece of paper I left in the kitchen. That’s when I couldn’t believe what she said to me.

“Well at least you’re getting your exercise today.”

Is that really exercise? No

Does she really think that was good exercise? Sadly, probably.

I walk up and down from my attic office to the kitchen more times than I can count in a day. In between all that I also do an actual real workout, one where I sweat and lift weights.

Have we, as a collective whole, really become so sedentary and inactive, that walking up and down two flights of stairs has been classified as exercise?

I almost forgot to mention that my house is set up off the road, so I also have to walk up and down about 15 steps every time I want to leave my house or come home.

Crazy exercise I get with all those stairs!

I was finally able to watch some of the 2009 Track and Field World Championships before they ended today, and if you want to talk about the dedication to success, these athletes train day after day to get to and compete at a world class level. For most of them training is their career, and it’s not over when the world championships are over or when the Olympics are over, they get right back to training.

I was in awe of the events I watched, even of the replays of events I missed, and the still shots wins and losses. The focus, desire, and pride of each of these individuals was so evident, in their posture, in their pre-event mental zone, when they won or didn’t win. In the pole vault, the second after the men’s gold medalist cleared the bar, he knew he won, and smiled the entire fall. When both the USA’s mens and womens 4x400m relay teams not only placed first but created extreme distances from themselves and the second place teams, it was like watching an impossibility, but that’s what they set out to do.

On the flip side, when the refs called a foul on the long jump, or when the USA’s womens 4x100m relay team fumbled the baton and were disqualified, a look of disbelief instantly came over them, everything they’d been working toward now needed to be worked at again.

When I was a track & field athlete and a swimmer, the pressure to perform seemed far greater than any soccer game I ever played in. Most of the events I did were individual events, a team didn’t directly rely on me, so once I was done with a throw, or once I touched the wall in swimming, the results were final and your reaction was real-time. There was no hiding your excitement (who would) but there was also no hiding any disaapointment you might have also experienced (there was tons of that at times.) There were some events you were expected to win, your team was counting on you.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had one meet, in either sport, gone a little differently.

If I didn’t hit my head and nearly knocked myself out in the water…

If I never sprained my ankle at the start of my last season…

Would my definition of success be different than what it is today? Perhaps. I don’t know…I never will.

I have no idea where I’d be today if the ifs didn’t happen, but I do know where I am today because of the ones that did happen. There’s a different type of success in my life now than there was then, but success is still there, and it’s still something I work toward every single day. There’s not a moment in time, where I’d wish all the challenges would go away. It’d be too easy then, and there’d be nothing to work toward.

We experience success because of the tasks we’ve accepted. All the things I’ve done in life may not have resulted in a positive outcome, but the experience has taught me to apply what I’ve learned in the next scenario that arises.

Build upon what you know, and what you’ve learned and apply it toward your success.