Category: kettlebells

Another trainer in Taiwan is telling the public that women should start kettlebell training using tiny toy kettlebells and he’s saying that we put them at risk by starting them with a heavier weight. In Chinese, here’s a recent post he wrote on it:

He’s quoting Pavel Tsatsouline to justify his position. Pavel was the guy that brought kettlebells to the US back in the late 1990’s and it caused a resurgence in kettlebell training. Here’s Pavel:

Kettlebells had been used in the US and the West before but they had died out. Pavel re-introduced them along with the Russian system and they’ve been popular ever since then. He wrote a number of books on kettlebell training, all of which I have and have read numerous times. This trainer claims that Pavel in his book Enter the Kettlebell (2006) says that women start with the 4kg and he supposedly translated the chart into Chinese here:

So supposedly, Pavel is recommending that women start with a 4 or 6kg. Except Pavel never said anything of the sort. The picture above is completely wrong. Here’s the actual chart from Enter the Kettlebell page 3:

So what size does Pavel recommend that women start with? 4kg? No. 6kg? No. 8kg (18lbs). In fact, 4kg (9lbs) and 6kg (13lbs) aren’t even on the chart. And not only that, but Pavel recommends that women should get the 8kg (18lbs), 12 (26lbs), and 16kg (35lbs) to start with if they can. So Pavel is NOT recommending AT ALL what this trainer is suggesting and in fact Pavel seems to think that women should start with fairly heavy kettlebells — the EXACT OPPOSITE of what this trainer claims Pavel is saying.
We follow Pavel’s model in our training and most of our women start with 8kg. If they’re strong, we start them with 12kg. But for lady trainers, we demand that they pass our kettlebell cert with the 12kg. So most of out ladies likely won’t start with 12kg.
This post also has the following picture listing different kettlebell organizations, suggesting that all of these organizations support this trainer’s ideas. Otherwise, why include the picture?

My guess is most readers have no idea who these organizations are but since they were included in the post as supposed support for his statements, let me tell you about a few of these organizations.
The first organization is the International Union of Kettlebell Lifting. They are the larger organization that oversees all kettlebell competition around the world. Needless to say, they do not think women should start with the 4kg.
The second and third organizations are roughly the same. The American Kettlebell Club is part of the larger World Kettlebell club and is lead by former world champion Valery Fedorenko. This is a picture I took of Valery when I attended and passed their three certifications in 2011.

Here’s me with Valery’s second in command Catherine Imes at the certs:

Here are the three certs I received from the World Kettlebell Club:

At the cert, I had to use the 16kg for multiple 10:00 sets and we used heavier kettlebells during the strength and conditioning cert on day two. What weight did Valery think women should use? It certainly wasn’t the 4kg. Women also had to pass the cert using the 12kg just like ours. So I have three certs and have personally trained with the founder of one of the organizations (WKC and AKC) the trainer above is using to justify his position. Let’s move on.
Another organization listed is the International Kettlebell and Fitness Federation (IKFF) led by Steve Cotter. Which Steve Cotter? This one:

That’s me on the left and I received my level one cert from Steve in 2009, making me the first certified kettlebell trainer in Taiwan. Here are my two certs from the IKFF:


This is me taking one of the roughly 16 tests I had to pass over two days with the 16kg kettlebell:

Here’s Steve lifting heavy kettlebells:

Do you think that Steve believes ladies should start with the 4kg? I can assure you he does not. Both Valery and Steve taught me that you can not properly use the correct muscles while lifting the kettlebell without using a weight sufficient enough to activate your hamstrings and glutes.So I have 5 certs in two of the organizations that this trainer is using to support his claims and they don’t suggest what he suggests.
Does Pavel think women should be using tiny toy kettlebell? Pavel started the Iron Maiden Challenge for women: 24kg press, pullup with the 24kg, and a pistol while holding the 24kg. What do you think?

One of the other organizations listed is StrongFirst, started by Pavel after he left the Russian Kettlebell Club (RKC). Notice the name — Strong First. What do you think that means? Use a 4kg first, right? So maybe Pavel changed his mind after he left the RKC and started StrongFirst? Let’s take a look at what he recommends women should start with when they lift the kettlebell. This is from his recent book Simple & Sinister (2015):

So Pavel in his latest book tells ladies they should start with the 8, 12, and 16kg. No mention of 4 or 6kg is there? So I think we can see that Pavel absolutely does not think ladies should be using tiny toy 4kg kettlebells. The idea is absurd.

We suggest the heavier weights because we are trained to teach people how to lift them correctly. In fact, we no longer offer the 4kg for sale because a woman trained THE RIGHT WAY will go beyond that weight usually in 5:00 or less. Why buy a kettlebell that will not be useful to you long term?

Be very, very careful who you get your information from. We do everything we can to bring correct information and safe, effective exercises to you. Thank you.

A video of a client doing the American swing is floating around. One of our trainers did a good job saying what’s wrong with it, but I want to address some of the points specifically. The trainer that taught this client said that the client’s hamstrings were so loose that she could not feel the swing with the hip in the normal position so he made a mistake by teaching her the swing with the knees locked into position. Apparently this client had come to our kettlebell seminar twice.
First of all, I appreciate everyone’s effort to learn and get things right.
Second, I’m glad this client attended our seminars and we thank her for that. Unfortunately, many people come to our seminars with problems so severe that once or twice doesn’t fix the problems. Many people we see will need more training, however some people that watch our videos before the seminar do quite well. Sometimes it’s the people you least expect to do well.

A huge part of the problem is the lack of knowledge of personal trainers. I taught a kettlebell seminar at the annual meeting of the largest personal training organization in Taiwan. Everyone knows who this group is. Out of 70 or so trainers that took the course, only about 5-6 had good hamstring development. Sorry, but that’s just a fact. Most of them teach group aerobics that greatly overuses the quads and under-uses the hamstrings. Most of them teach yoga, which acts like your hamstrings and glutes are things to sit on and to stretch but never strengthen those muscles. I later trained a head trainer certed in this organization whose hamstrings felt like tofu. Imagine a fat lady’s tricep that hangs off her arm. That’s what this head trainer’s hamstrings were like. It was nearly impossible to teach this head trainer the kettlebell swing. The fact is that she is certified under an organization and trains in a gym that simply doesn’t value what you can’t see in the mirror and you could see it from her movement skills.

I mention those trainers and that head trainer specifically to show that many people and even many trainers have exactly the same problem – practically non-existent hamstring and glute muscles. I’ve been saying this for years. If you start kettlebell training with nothing back there, then it will be extremely difficult for you to swing the kettlebell correctly. That isn’t fixed in one or two seminars. Some of the people that come to us have never worked out in a gym before so they don’t know. But a surprising amount of the people who can’t do it not only come from gyms, they have personal trainers but it doesn’t help because hamstrings and glutes aren’t mirror muscles that mainstream personal trainers focus on.

If you have so little hamstring and glute strength that you can’t swing the kettlebell correctly, then the American swing is the absolute worst thing you can give to the client. The American swing takes out what the swing is good for in the first place: training the hamstrings and glutes. Instead, it replaces those muscles with the arms as can be seen in many American swing videos. Most Crossfit people use the American swing as one big delt front raise with a little momentum thrown in. This ruins the movement pattern we’re trying to fix or create in the first place if you don’t have it. People raise things using only their delts naturally. They must be taught to use the hamstrings and glutes. You can’t have it both ways – if you’re using the delts to raise the kettlebell, you WILL NOT use the hamstrings and glutes.

No one should be doing the American swing unless you want to compete in the Crossfit games. I keep telling trainers that you should know what every movement contributes to the client’s goal. If the goal is fat loss, the American swing is the wrong choice because it ignores the larger hamstring and glute muscles in favor of the smaller delts, which burn a lot fewer calories. The American swing with it’s terrible overheard, bottoms-up position limits how much weight you can use. That also limits the amount of calories you will burn. For most people, the swing should be used to build up the posterior chain. But again, the American swing largely skips that, making it a poor choice. So if your goal is anything other than competing in the Crossfit games (where it must be used) then the American swing is a poor choice.

And I personally don’t care what people see on Youtube, as apparently this young lady wanted to learn it because she saw it there. If I had a client tell me they wanted to learn the American swing because they saw it on Youtube, I’d suggest they watch better videos or not watch Youtube at all. I certainly would not teach them something I knew was wrong, as this trainer said he did.

The American swing also causes people to hyper-extend the back and hyper-extension is already a problem for hyper-flexible people with no hamstring or glute strength. Again, the problem with these women (and 90% of the time it’s women) is that they were hyper-mobile and hyper-flexible to begin with then they started doing “fitness” like yoga and aerobics that totally skipped hamstring and glute training, leading to even more hyper-flexibility and hyper-mobility than when they started. So the American swing takes a pre-existing condition and makes it even worse. Look at the video and you’ll see she’s pulling with the arms because the hamstrings and glutes aren’t involved enough with the swing. And she almost loses the kettlebell over her head several times. She can’t control the kettlebell because she’s hyper-mobile and because the American swing puts her body in a bad position. It’s hard for anyone to control the kettlebell overhead with the handle pointing down and the heavier body of the kettlebell above the handle. With a hyper-mobile person, it’s a recipe for disaster.

So tell clients to turn off Youtube or point them to better stuff, stop pandering to clients by teaching them whatever they want, teach them instead what they NEED, work on their weaknesses even though you can’t see them in a mirror, and stop getting your information from bad sources.

I’ve given up talking about training instead of exercising because I often feel like I’m wasting my breath. Instead, I’m working personally with people that are likely to understand the concept. But I also wrote the Kettlebell Quest DVD for people at home that want to train instead of exercise. The point of the DVD program isn’t just to lose fat or entertain you or anything else. The point of the program is for you to MASTER the exercises and the entire program. You train each level in order to reach the next level workout. You then progress through the program until you reach the end. Not one…single…exercise is in there randomly. Everything was planned out very meticulously to help you reach kettlebell mastery. The goal is to reach the last workout. That’s why it’s called Kettlebell Quest.

And when you reach the end, what is the result? Outstanding fat loss and conditioning. The result comes from the process of training!

At our recent kettlebell cert, the gym had some kettlebells they had bought from us and some pretty ones that are common in a lot of gyms because gym owners think they look nice. They were the stainless steel ones like this. I explained at the beginning that this isn’t a good kettlebell because the stainless steel handle makes it impossible to grip when your palm gets sweaty. To solve the problem, this particular kettlebell had an added grip so it wouldn’t slip. I explained that this made it even more useless since the kettlebell has to rotate in your hand when you swing and snatch it.

A couple of people nodded but it was clear to me that most people didn’t get it. Yet.

Some folks used our kettlebells for the techniques and some used the stainless steel ones but as the day went one, fewer and fewer people used the steel ones. The trainers started coming up to me and complaining about the stainless bells. They didn’t sit right, they didn’t rotate in the hand, they had a lot of problems. By the end of the day after the trainers had learned how to use the kettlebell, no one wanted to use the stainless steel ones at all.

So let me tell you a little secret — most people who design, manufacture, and sell fitness equipment don’t even work out, let alone use their own equipment. And it shows. Want more proof? Here’s the way a competitor suggests to use the kettlebell — theirs is made of plastic by the way.

Do you see anything wrong with their movements? Is that how the kettlebell is supposed to be used?

There’s a connection between having a quality tool and having quality movement. If you use junk, you will get junk movement. The problem is that most people don’t understand that, so some gyms and people buy garbage kettlebells.

Don’t get me started on the place that buys outrageously priced Kaiser bicycles and super expensive Hammer Strength equipment by the truckload but won’t buy anything but the cheapest kettlebells they can get. That’s a story for another time.

Believe it or not, some people say we shouldn’t criticize other fitness practices. They even criticize us for criticizing others. Isn’t that weird? If we shouldn’t criticize others then why do they criticize us for doing so? Aren’t they actually agreeing with us by doing that? It’s bizarre.
Fact: there is such a thing as right and wrong in fitness.
This picture is proof.
NEVER, EVER hold the kettlebell this way! This is NOT how it’s done. Why? Your thumb is not strong enough to hold up the kettlebell. If you try to hold it like this, you will drop it. This picture comes from a women’s fitness magazine, BTW, where a lot of the general public gets it’s so-called “fitness knowledge.”
So if you’re one of those people who thinks we shouldn’t criticize others, then please hold the kettlebell like this, have it drop on your toes and break them, and then in your ambulance ride to the hospital, maybe you will realize that there is such thing as right and wrong in fitness and you were simply wrong.
As for the rest of us, we’ll keep learning from people that have proven through real results that they’re doing it the right way.