Andrew Read

A One-Size-Fits-All Solution for Problematic Kettlebell Presses

December 10, 2014 By Andrew Read 4 Comments

Master RKC Andrew Read Performs a Kettlebell Bottoms Up Press

The learning and skill continuum that begins at HKC and progresses through RKC and RKC-II follows a fairly straight line. We begin with patterning exercises in HKC—two hand swings, the goblet squat, and the get-up—before progressing to one handed variations on these themes such as the clean and snatch, and the double kettlebell front squat at the RKC. The work done on the get-up lends itself to pressing and snatching which in turn leads to the double push press and jerk as well as the windmill and the bent press at RKC-II.

At RKC-II, people usually face one of two problems, either their thoracic mobility is poor and they struggle with the double overhead work (as well as the windmill and bent press) or they struggle to get their heavy press. As much as the old RKC saying, “To press a lot, you must press a lot” does ring true for many, it may also lead to bigger problems down the line.

About a year ago I wrote an article for Breaking Muscle (Single Kettlebell Ballistic Complexes: How to Save Your Shoulders and Still Work Overhead) which explained the three different types of AC joint set up that people have, as well as possible ways to train long term without damaging yourself. But that still doesn’t help us with the heavy press goal if we’re on our way to RKC-II, does it?

When I wrote Beast Tamer, I outlined many different press plans that could help you get through a sticking point in your press training. I’ve learnt a bit since then and want to outline a plan below that will help you get through your sticking points without risking injury.

What we need is a drill that gives us the same feel as the heavy press and the same effort—all without placing the same strain on the AC joint. This is where the bottoms-up press (BUP) comes into play. The BUP is an interesting drill. Interesting in that I have used it as a one-size-fits-all solution for a variety of problems with the press. Not gripping the kettlebell tightly? The BUP will fix that. Not staying tight in your press? The BUP will fix that too.

The BUP is ideal for our needs as it teaches great form while forcing you to use less load. That may sound problematic, but the body doesn’t register how much you lift, only how much tension you generate. If your form is even slightly off, the kettlebell will fall. This is what makes the BUP ideal as a learning tool. It is automatically apparent what needs to happen and where the point of failure is.

Imagine that the fulcrum (center of rotation) for this movement is not the delicate AC joint, but instead a point midway between the deltoid and the elbow—essentially the middle of the bicep. By focusing on having your elbow move around that point while doing a BUP you will teach your whole body to engage during the press. Likely you will find this feels significantly different to what you have been doing when overhead pressing.

One of the things to keep in mind in relation to the BUP, is that it has a great effect up to a point. I don’t believe that past 32kg they do much to boost your press as the skill becomes its own lift. Prior to that they can be a valuable tool to teach you tension and alignment. Do not make the mistake of turning the drill into an exercise. The goal is never to have the best BUP in the world, rather to use the BUP to build your press.

Low reps are a must with the BUP, as the CNS fatigue from the high grip demand is intense. 2-3 sets of 3-5 reps seem to work best prior to your limit presses for the day.

The other side of this equation is that healthy shoulders are not built from pressing alone. For every push, you must have at least one set of pulling to counteract it. While the pull up is usually the choice of functional trainers, I’ll caution against it as the lat also acts as an internal rotator of the arm, so if all you do are presses and pull ups you’re just as likely to end up with bad shoulders as if you only did presses.

At RPT, we use a variety of weighted mobility drills to achieve healthy shoulders. Here’s how a press workout might look:

Lying dislocates with weight – 3 sets of 10 reps. Paired with push-ups for 3 sets of 10-20 reps.

BUP – 2 x 5 at 50%

Y-T-Row – 2 x 5-5-10

BUP – 3 ladders of 1-2-3 reps combined with easy light two-hand swings in between to help shake the tension out.

Perform a rear support—think of it as a face up plank—for 60 seconds and then do a get-up on each side. Perform three super sets of this as a final shoulder health practice. Make sure to stretch after and “unglue” all the tension you’ve built up in these muscles during training. Pay particular attention to the triceps, lats, traps, and shoulders.

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Andrew Read, Master RKC, Author of Beast Tamer, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognized as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.

Workout of the Week: Lifting Heavy Bells

April 30, 2014 By Andrew Read 1 Comment

**THE BEAST: Russian Kettlebell – 48kg (106 lbs.)**

Life is hard and most of us are facing the very real prospect that what we’d like to do is limited by what we can actually achieve. For those of us who are trainers we see clients every day who are limited by their range of movement more than their lack of desire.

The fitness world has made a killing from creating ways for you to exercise and add stress to the body even when you shouldn’t. By putting you in a seated position and using fixed planes of motion equipment manufacturers have actually made the problems worse, not better.

For many the goal of a heavy kettlebell press can seem very far off. Most likely this is for people training for RKC II, but it is a good goal for those who have no desire to ever attend a certification too. The most common pressing goal is a half-bodyweight press so let’s use that as the end goal.

One of the things that needs to be said right upfront is that if you have problem shoulders this is not the program for you. Pressing heavy requires pain free mobile shoulders. If you cannot achieve a solid overhead position with arm vertical and locked out then you need to address that before embarking on a press specialization plan. Remember – mobility before stability/ motor control. Stability before strength.

When planning a session to get big loads overhead you still want to make sure you tick all the right boxes during the warm up to make sure the body is primed and ready to go. A good place to start is with some mobility work – think of this as insurance, and a final double check to make sure that we really are in the right shape to get that heavy load overhead.

The main focus of the session is getting used to lifting heavy bell/s. Because we can’t yet press our goal bell we need to come up with some alternatives to get the body used to having that supramaximal weight locked out overhead as well as teach the body how to deal with getting it to the rack.

Warm up:

Foam roller T-spine.
Rib Pull x 10 reps each side.
Armbar x 10 breaths each side.
Get ups x 1 each x 3 with progressively heavier weights (ending one bell below your goal press bell. i.e. if you goal press is 40kg then you might go 28kg, 32kg, 36kg).

Clean and press ladder 1 x 1-2-3-4-5 with a bell you are comfortable with.

Clean weight ladder. Perform 3 sets of successively heavier cleans, performing 3 reps each side. Finish with goal press bell. i.e. if my goal press is the 40kg you would use 32kg x 3/3, 36kg x 3/3, 40kg x 3/3.

Push press x 3 sets of 2 reps with goal press bell.

Two hand swings x 2 sets of 20 reps. Use a light bell. This is active recovery and to help get the tension out from the heavy work.

Heavy get up x 3 x 1 each side. Use a bell one higher than your goal press bell. i.e. if the goal press bell is 40kg then use the 44kg.

Clean the same bell x 3 each side.

Three successively heavier presses. i.e. if the goal press bell is the 40kg then do 32kg x 1, 36kg x 1, 40kg x 1.

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About Andrew Read, Master RKC, Dragon Door Australia: Andrew Read, Master RKC, Author of Beast Tamer, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognized as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.

The Only Three Ways to Build the Body

January 22, 2014 By Andrew Read 2 Comments

There are only three ways to build the body – intensity, volume, and density. So why is it that we often look to only change one variable when seeking to improve?

In textbook periodization the early phases of training are characterized by a steady increase in volume first. This continues until beginning the competition preparation phases and a subsequent rise in intensity. However in modern fitness planning it is far more common to see people try to increase either intensity via lifting more weight or density by trying to do more reps in a given time frame.

Back when I started lifting weights it was common for beginners to start in the gym with a simple plan that was full body, with each exercise being done for three sets of ten reps. It was common for there to be an exercise for major muscle groups, and this plan was repeated for three days each week. As the trainee improved it was normal to add an extra day of training, thereby increasing the total volume of work they did for the week.

This process of adding volume was repeated by adding another set or two into the workout, up until it got to the point where it was unrealistic in terms of time management to complete the session. At this point trainees were often put onto a plan called a split routine where they did different body parts on different days, or still did the whole body each time but performed different lifts. The trend of adding volume continued as people added more exercises to each body part, until they arrived at something like three to five exercises per body part, done for three to five sets of eight to fifteen reps each. It’s not uncommon for bodybuilders to hit as many as twenty-five sets of work for a big body part like the legs. As the total volume of the workout increased they kept dividing the workout into smaller and smaller groups of body parts starting with full body, then half body, and then into days where one major part per day was being worked such as legs, arms, or chest.

And the reason for all this is simple – because adding volume works.

But then we get to strength training and one of the things that everyone seems to always think is that plans need to be kept low volume. I don’t believe that to be the case for most people, and the reason is simple – because most haven’t broken through to the point where volume can no longer added. It’s only when you can no longer recover from your previous training that volume can no longer be added. This ultimately is because of only one thing – your training intensity is too high.

Two very noteworthy experts, from two different types of weight lifting, agree on one thing. That average intensity should be around 70%. Sheiko believes this to be the case for power lifters, and Medveydev claims this for nearly all lifters too (except those at International Master of Sports levels, i.e. those attending the Olympics. Obviously because these are rare genetic specimens, and the use of performance enhancing drugs must be considered, the rules that apply to them are slightly different). When two guys at the top of their fields are both saying the same thing we should all listen up.

Often people look at all the numbers in a lifting plan and see a mass of percentages but never take the time to consider how they add up.

Method #1

The simplest way to moderate intensity is to do as many sets above 70% as you do below. For example, doing a set at 60%, then at 70% and finally at 80% keeps the average intensity at 70%, as long as you do the same number of reps in each set.

For example: 60%/3, 70%/3, 80%/3.

If you want to do more sets at the top weight you need extra sets at the lower weights too. The lower weight sets are useful for building technical proficiency.

For example: 55%/3, 65%/3, 70%/3, 80%/3 x 2 will still give you an average intensity of 70%, while giving you exposure to higher loads too.

Method #2

When it comes to fixed weight objects, like kettlebells or sandbags, it becomes much harder to moderate the weight and a better method becomes moderating intensity through manipulating volume. Let’s say that you can press a 24kg bell five times just to make the math easier. If you do ladders of 2, 3, and 5 reps, then your average for each ladder comes out to 67%. That’s pretty good considering that kettlebells tend to come in large jumps in sizes and you can’t micro-load like you can with barbells.

The other way to do this is to play around with how many total ladders you do in a session. Let’s suppose that the maximum number of 2-3-5 ladders you can cope with at a given weight is five. If you have a week where you perform four ladders, then two ladders, and three ladders over successive workouts your average intensity is 60%. However, if you then perform five ladders, three ladders, and four ladders the following week you have an average of 80%. And when you look at the long-term effect of that you wind up back at our magic 70% intensity.

The magic thing about training at this seventy percent average is that you can train a lot. I mean A LOT. Dan John’s Forty Day Plan in Easy Strength is a classic example that allows you to train daily with an average intensity of 70%.

A further example that I’ve used personally was during helping Beth Andrews and Val Hedlund get ready for the Iron Maiden challenge. They both did workouts that featured twenty sets of five presses with a 16kg bell. With a projected max of 24kg, that 16kg works out to 67%. (That’s as close as you’ll likely get when using kettlebells because of the big jumps from one bell to the next).

The lesson here is simple – keep average intensity to seventy percent and try adding volume before you add intensity. This has the added benefit of not taxing the joints so much, nor needing to psyche oneself up for training efforts. There is no need for screaming at this stage of training – save that for game day. But get the volume in.

People like to talk about how strength is a skill. Well, skills need to be practiced a lot before they are polished and become second nature. Keeping the intensity moderate allows many, many practice sessions that would otherwise be missed due to muscle soreness or fatigue. All those extra reps will add up when you call on your strength to be there for you.

At this point you’re asking how do you know if you need more volume? Just ask yourself one question – are you getting the result you want? If not try doing more. I think you’ll be surprised at exactly how much you can do, and how quickly you improve, once you add more volume.

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About Andrew Read, Master RKC, Dragon Door Australia: Andrew Read, Master RKC, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognized as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.

Combining RKC and FMS

January 8, 2014 By Andrew Read Leave a Comment

The FMS is a fantastic tool kit for any trainer, and when used in conjunction with RKC methods can provide a quick way to resolve almost any issue a client may have. But it can also be incredibly daunting once you start to peel back the layers of the systems and see everything that there is.

One of the best ways to use both systems together is to start to look at the framework that both provide and distil them down to their barest elements. In the case of the RKC drills our purpose is to lead a client in only a single direction, to an “a-ha” moment. A smart drill leaves them with only one direction to go in – the correct one, allowing them to instantly get the feeling or movement they were previously unable to connect with.

While there are many corrective exercises also within the FMS, and this is perhaps what it is best known for, people often forget that the purpose of the FMS is to not only screen for and correct asymmetries, but also to give us a path to follow once we go back to strength work. A simple framework that can be followed is that each movement has four steps –

No load, pattern assistance.
No load, no pattern assistance.
Load, with pattern assistance.
Load, with no pattern assistance.

Looking at how we teach the swing at the RKC you can see that this format is followed closely. We begin by teaching the hinge. This is often assisted in a variety of ways – either using the blades of the hands in the hips to help find the hip crease, pushing the butt back towards a wall, or using a dowel to teach how to keep neutral spine.

And here is where the “a-ha” drills fit in – we can go back and forth between the first and second steps as needed to reinforce the pattern. Our intent is to remove the pattern assistance and have the person do it unloaded but perfectly on their own. If form breaks down we can get them to return to the pattern assistance method (dowel, wall, etc.) until it becomes ingrained.

From there we can move to kettlebell deadlifts with the partner “reminding” the student how to keep the body tight via some tough love. Many people struggle to activate the right muscles to begin with and providing a cue that allows them to feel what muscles need to be switched is valuable. The final step in this process is to finish with deadlifting without any form of pattern assistance.

You can follow the same step for the swing itself. Begin with the hip hinge reinforced with a dowel. Move to hinging without any form of pattern assistance. Then onto the swing where we can assist in any number of ways from using a towel to teach timing, hip drive and straight arms, to putting the toes on a slight raise to teach people to avoid scooping, to having a target behind the student to have them hike the bell more, to spiked swings to reinforce the loading phase of the swing. Finally, once we have cleared all problems with our “a-ha” drills we can swing without pattern assistance.

The FMS also have a logical system of progression for loading and uses four postures that follow a developmental sequence. They start with lying, progress to quadruped, then onto kneeling and finally standing. If you look closely you’ll see that this sequence is the get up. That kind of symmetry between the two systems isn’t a mistake as both are about movement and strength.

But how can we apply our FMC framework to a skill like kettlebell pressing, using the postures too?

One of the issues people often have with pressing is an inability to stay tight through their midsection during the press putting their lower back at risk. If we begin lying supine (face up) we can do the backpressure crunch drill. To perform this have your partner place a rolled up towel under your lower back and lie down on it. Bring your knees to your chest and push your lower back into the ground while your partner tries to take the towel away as you extend your legs. This will teach how to stay tight through the midsection while keeping neutral spine. Retest with your press and see if it has improved.

The next step is to be in quadruped. For this drill we’re going to do bird dogs using a Cook band. Our single kettlebell press is fired on a diagonal and this drill will teach you to stay tight while your arm is moving. (To regress this drill slightly stay in the same position, but use a foam roller on the lower back to teach how to keep the natural curve of the spine). Retest again with your press and see if it has improved.

From here we can choose to press from kneeling and use either the tall kneeling or half kneeling postures. I would pick which one to use based on whether my client had asymmetries in their Inline Lunge or Hurdle Step tests (half kneeling in this case). If they were symmetrical then we could progress to tall kneeling. For pattern assistance we could do a core activation drill and press the kettlebell bottoms up. Again, perform the drill then retest your press to see what has improved. (Kneeling and bottoms up presses are taught and discussed at RKCII so if in doubt please see an RKCII for further information).

The final step is a standing single bell press without any assistance. At any point if the movement degrades there is the choice of regressing the posture used, or going back into the matrix and deciding if we need pattern assistance. Both answers can be right, depending on the person’s unique history.

Keep these simple rules in mind when training and you’ll find a lot of the confusion melts away. The takeaways are that the RKC uses “a-ha” drills to give a client only a single solution to their problem. If the drill you’ve picked doesn’t lead to the right answer then you picked the wrong drill. The FMS uses a simple four by four matrix to figure where training needs to be at any time. Follow the process and you’ll see that the system is very logical, and make sure to use the system.

Tying the two together leads to quick gains for your students and can often shine a light on the right path to take when someone just seems stalled in training.

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Want a Foolproof Planning System for Group Workouts?

September 5, 2013 By Andrew Read 2 Comments

Just like there’s more than one way to skin a cat there are many, many ways to create a training plan. When it comes to training individuals this is usually fairly easy as you are able to adjust according to the individual’s response to the previous sessions and there can be a large amount of communication back and forth regarding what they enjoyed, felt was beneficial or potentially too much for them. But that relatively straight forward planning process changes immensely when you start to look at group training.

I know many trainers these days have gone to group training in an effort to better leverage their time but one of the consequences of training a group is that everything has to become far more general and very often individual needs are lost in the change. Recently there was a post on the Dragon Door Certified Instructors facebook page regarding just this problem so I thought it might be helpful to outline a system that allows you to plan any workout.

The thing about this system is that I found out recently that it is also the exact same method being used to plan sessions by guys like Alwyn Cosgrove. The main thought that goes through my head when I train groups is that I want to be sure that we hit the most important things for everyone. Everyone needs more mobility and core work, no questions. So no matter what we need to hit those things in every single session. Not only that, but as Ian King told me we need to make sure that we place our priorities first in the session so that we can attack then when we have the most focus and energy. It’s no good saying we’re all about core training and doing five minutes of it tacked on at the end of the session.

While these two things need addressing we also need to understand that while strength is important so is movement. And if, like many, you came to kettlebells to increase athleticism then we need some form of movement work in our session too. This doesn’t mean we need to go jumping around like a ninja on amphetamines but it does mean we should consider doing some work that isn’t bilateral and maybe is from a split or single leg stance, or it could be rotational work, or may even include some running or agility drills.

Finally, no matter how people choose to argue it, there needs to be some kind of fitness or conditioning work. Your heart is a muscle too and needs to be worked through all ranges for health. However, this work can take many forms from competitive games like a head to head workout, or a simple run around the block. The actual format doesn’t matter as long as you do something that gets your heart rate up.

I’m reluctant to call these rules, as I think of them more as a set of guidelines as to how a session should be run to ensure that we make the most of the time we have for training. Warm up Extra mobility work based on your warm up. Core work. Skill practice, power and speed work.Strength.Competition/ conditioning /Cool down.

I won’t dwell on warming up too much as I hope most people understand what it is for. A warm up should start generally and end specifically. If your session is to include overhead pressing, for instance, a warm up might have joint rotations through the major joints, then stick dislocates, Y and T work with a light band and then some light pressing. All of this lets you know where your body is up to prior to actually testing it with today’s main work. The warm up includes essential mobility work. Good examples include, after joint rotations, brettzels, armbars, and Cossack squats. The next stage of the warm up is often forgotten except by veteran trainers, or those who have finally understood that they have issues that need to be constantly addressed. A good option here is to allow people five minutes of their own time to address their individual needs based on what they felt was stiff or tight during the warm up. This is also a great time for all your lazy clients to do the therapy work that their physiotherapist gave to them, because there’s a large chance that it isn’t being done at home. This extra mobility work can be different from session to session and is not set in stone – it needs to be driven entirely individually.

I’ve been on both sides of the core training argument. From, “I lift heavy therefore my core gets all the work it really needs in preventing my trunk from collapsing” to doing specific core only sessions twice a week that were an hour each. Unfortunately my clients don’t have two spare hours each week to do core only work but I can make sure that they do at least some each time they train. Core work needs to involve both resistance to flexion and rotation such as planks, as well as exercises that strengthen those functions like sit ups or hanging leg raises as well as exercises like the get up or windmill that tie them all together. I know many will suggest that it not a good idea to hit core work before you do any heavy lifting but the reality is that most people are lifting nowhere near their absolute potential and whatever fatigue you cause in the muscles that stabilize the spine is negligible compared to the benefits you get from putting this most vital piece of the training plan at the front of the session when it can be addressed with full attention.

In terms of training sequencing you should always hit the most demanding efforts before the less demanding efforts. This can be a little confusing as many equate work that leaves them out of breath as demanding, however in this context it relates to CNS demand. So speed and power exercises go before maximal strength work, which goes before strength endurance work, which in turn goes before pure endurance work. If there is no need for speed and power work within the session, and for many there isn’t as the risk is simply too high versus the possible reward, you can still use low level power activities such as jumping rope, or skipping and running drills. These will serve to really wake the system up and get it ready for the main body of the workout. Strength work will form the majority of your training session.

Maximal strength has a carryover to many other activities and is also the thing that is most responsible for changing people’s bodies the quickest when combined with a good diet. The competition and conditioning phase is an ideal part to set up a head to head style workout, or do any of a number of complexes or hybrid workouts such as higher rep kettlebell ballistics combined with endurance activities like running or rowing. Finally the cool down should include the same elements that were included in the warm up. This is a final chance to check that the body is still operating at least as well as it did when you started as well as a chance to bring the body and mind back to a resting state.

Here’s a sample session with the deadlift as the main lift:

Warm up

Butt touches (face away from wall and hip hinge until your butt kisses the wall, then extend hips until lockout). 3 x 20.
Body weight single leg deadlifts for 10 each leg paired with 10 body weight squats. Repeat sequence so you’ve done 20 reps for each.
Lunge walk x 10m forward and back. Crawl x 10m forward and back.
Two-hand swing 2 x 20. Extra mobility – Towel toe touches. (Roll up a towel and place it between legs, just above the knees. Reach down and touch the ground, squeezing the towel hard between your knees. Bend your legs as needed to touch the ground). Pair this with cobra stretches. 2 x 10 each.

Core work

Get up 1/1Crawl 10m forward and back Plank hold for 60 seconds. Repeat three times.

Power and speed work

Power clean 5 sets of 3.

Strength

Deadlift 1 x 10 @50%, 1 x 5 @ 70%, 1 x 3 @80% then 5 x 2 @90%

Competition/ Conditioning

Kettlebell snatch x 10/10
One hand swing x 10/10
Row 250m Repeat five times.

No rest between exercises but take two minutes rest between rounds. The goal is to keep the rowing pace even through all five rounds. (FYI the standard at my gym for this is a 24kg for men and holding under 50 seconds for the 250m row, and for ladies the 16kg bell and holding under 60 seconds for the row). Cool down – Repeat the warm up sequence in reverse so that you start with the twenty rep sets of swings and finish with the butt touches.

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Run for Your Life

May 29, 2013 By Andrew Read Leave a Comment

Distance running was indispensible; it was the way we survived and thrived across the planet. You ran to eat and avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and you ran off with her to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love – everything we sentimentally call our “passions” and “desires” it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known. – Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

Like many who found Dragon Door, I first came to the site looking for kettlebell information. Back then I was looking for a training method that didn’t make me feel so awful all the time. I wasn’t training stupidly, far from it, but I was starting to notice that my body wasn’t feeling good very often. My back would be stiff like a block of wood and no amount of foam rolling, mobility work or massage was even making a dent in it. But it wasn’t until my shoulder started to act up that I really started to look in earnest for whatever piece of the puzzle was missing.

Up until that point I’d had what I thought of as a fairly active life. I’d done martial arts for more than twenty years with some decent competitive results, spent some time in the mud and fooled around with just about every form of training you can think of – from sandbags to Olympic lifts to body weight and everything in between I’ve pretty much done it. (No Shake Weight though, because, well….you know.)

But I’d never really done much running. Growing up I’d been a good swimmer and spent many hours in the pool but ‘d never been comfortable as a runner. Even when I was in the military and would run most days it was a rare occasion that I would finish a run feeling the same sense of whole body joy that I did from a good weights session.

But once I started training with kettlebells I found a whole new level of what I should be thinking of as “good”. My movement got better; I became accidentally more mobile. I was really only training with a single bell at this time learning the lifts but the benefits started happening so fast that they were impossible to miss. The odd thing was that as my movement got better my desire to move more increased too. Suddenly I wanted to run.

The problem with that, as any person over thirty will tell you, is that if you haven’t built the skill as a runner early in life you are going to suffer when you take it up later on. But as McDougall says in the quote above – we are hardwired to run. Without it we’d all have never made it out of the Paleolithic era. And the better my body felt the more I wanted to run, because the human animal is designed to run.

One of the things that often draws people to the kettlebell is its usefulness as a go anywhere, train you for anything, all in one hand held gym nature. It’s for that reason that they’ve been taken up by many military units around the world so they can set up small workout areas, so called “courage corners”, on far flung bases to help keep the men fit.

The modern fitness world is full of people telling you that such and such is the key to tactical fitness or that this certain thing is what SEALs use to stay in shape. But the bit no one is telling you, is that the toughest, fittest, baddest men on the planet all have one thing in common – they run.

Man evolved to be an apex predator because of our running abilities. We aren’t the fastest by any means but given time we can run down just about anything eventually. Due to our ability to regulate heat without needing to stop and pant we can literally run an animal to death by heatstroke. Persistence hunting has been around for about two million years and was one of the main ways we could catch more nutrient dense prey when all we had was rocks for weapons.

Over the last few years this idea has become more and more firmly planted in my head – that training has to be about movement. Not just mobility work but being outside, connected to our planet, moving over the earth – and that our fitness work should support that instead of being done solely inside an artificial environment and judged against artificial parameters – who really cares how fast you did a workout, or if you lifted slightly more weight? How did it make you a better animal and get you back closer to your apex predator status?

So how do we transfer our gym fitness to actual useful fitness? I have to be honest and say that there is often, in the world of performance training, an over simplification by people with vested commercial interests in saying things like “just get stronger”. While many people do need extra strength, when it comes to covering ground quickly, particularly with a heavy pack, there is no substitute for putting in the miles. Getting miles in the legs has been a time proven method of developing Spartan stamina and elite fighters for as far back as we can find records. From Ali to Dan Gable, from Tito Ortiz to SEALs and the SAS, aerobic efficiency is the most highly prized commodity and the only way to gain that is to spend time practicing it.

I’ve been fooling around a lot with this for the last two years, developing a base strategy to use for anyone that covers a lot of ground. From Ironman triathletes to those attending special forces selection the results are now there to show that it works across the board. Here’s my list of essential exercises:

Hinge exercises –

The single leg deadlift is king here. Many will wonder why no barbell deadlift. To them I say go try to run for two hours the day after barbell deadlifts and you will understand the reason. Single leg training gives you the same hip strength benefits, plus anti rotation and a stable single leg stance from which to base your stride. Because the loads used are lower there is less stiffness in the following days meaning you are better able to swim, ride, run or pack march. While there is a place for maximal strength work it needs to be well away from operational periods or racing.

The swing. Kettlebell swings have a therapeutic effect on the back. Because they can be done for higher reps it’s possible to flush large amounts of blood into the back and offer it some relief. Believe me when I say that a hundred swings the day after a six-hour ride in the aero position will make you feel like a new man.

For lower body assistance work nothing beats a sled/ prowler. Concentric only work is similar to cycling in effect, has near zero cost in terms of muscle soreness and helps get you up hills faster. If you have no sled then high rep step ups can be substituted (step height needs to be high enough that thigh is parallel to floor).

Upper body –

Nothing beats body weight work. If the goal is to move your body fast for extended periods of time you need to practice moving your body. My personal favourite are ring dips and pull ups, or if you’re able, muscle ups. While barbells and kettlebells have a place here one of the problems faced is extra weight being added to the frame. Speed and efficiency have a lot to do with how heavy you are, and on operations that extra muscle needs feeding too. Keeping your bodyweight down has many big benefits too in terms of injury prevention. (A 2kg/ 5lb weight gain is equivalent to dealing with an extra 15,000kg/ ~7,000lbs of extra force through your spine and joints while running over 5km).

Core work –

Keeping your spine in place for long periods of time means you need to spend time on core training. Many relegate core training to the banished list figuring that all the load bearing activity they do is enough. It’s not. My current training sessions are roughly two hours long and I’m focusing on many harder body weight skills. These skills all have one thing in common – every single one of them is a plank or hollow position drill. With limited running since an Ironman event I am actually running faster – my body feels far more stable and locked in place when I run, thanks to my daily single leg deadlifts and core work.

Assistance/ conditioning work –

There’s only two lifts worth worrying about here for my money. Snatches and long cycle clean and jerks are the two biggest bang for your buck kettlebell exercises. But unlike normal training sessions where your goal is a certain number of reps you need to focus instead on time. I often intersperse these with some running – think of it as kettlebell roadwork. A minute of long cycle followed by an 800m run, four times through is a solid session. I tend to reverse these so that a longer interval of snatches or long cycle is followed by a shorter interval run and vice versa. Don’t try to do five minutes of snatching then a 1km interval run. (Because you’ll only try that the one time, trust me).

Running and walking –

While elite runners are out there pounding away daily we do need to make some concession to them being elite runners – in other words they are genetically selected to being able to withstand daily running. At Read Performance Training we use a run/ walk strategy alternating each daily. Walking has an enormous recovery benefit, is a good way to continue strengthening your aerobic system, and also to keep building the body to handle more running. Don’t discount how powerful walking can be. Our running is built around three to four days per week with two easy runs of 30-40 minutes and a longer run of up to two hours with the last 20-30 minutes hard. If they can handle a fourth day we do a harder interval session, like the long cycle/ 800m run option listed above. On non-running days our clients walk for an hour.

Now you’ve got the tools, get out there and get moving. You were born to do it.

***

About Andrew Read, Senior RKC, Dragon Door Australia: Andrew Read, Senior RKC, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognized as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.

Athletic Achievement—And Why I Chose to Stay with Dragon Door’s RKC

March 15, 2013 By Andrew Read 21 Comments

It may surprise people to hear it but I never attended the RKC because of kettlebells. I had been using them myself, and had moved all my clients to using them and gotten rid of nearly everything else we did, but the RKC wasn’t my actual goal. I wasn’t sure whether or not a trip to the USA was worth it in terms of learning enough to justify the cost. The goal was CK-FMS.

I am a big believer in success leaving you clues. I had been seeing Gray Cook’s name all over the place and had bought some of his DVDs and loved what I saw. Then Dragon Door announced that they were going to run an RKC-only FMS based course called the Certified Kettlebell Functional Movement Specialist (CK FMS). So I made the choice to go to this RKC thing and see what the fuss was about before attending the CK-FMS.

I’m glad I did because I learned that the RKC isn’t about the kettlebell. I also learned that it wasn’t really about how to lift them either. The drills and concepts within can be applied equally to training anyone from regular Joe’s to world championship level athletes – and I’ve certainly done that, training people to lose over 30% of their body weight as well as guys like Major League Baseball pitcher Peter Moylan, world no gi BJJ champion Sophia Drysdale and everyone in between.

If you’ve been in the game for any length of time you know one thing with absolute certainty – there’s no “one thing” that people need. Maybe one client has done years of yoga but never any resistance training – they may need to add strength. Others may have the opposite problem – years of heavy weight training may have wreaked havoc on their bodies and what they need is to rebuild and gain some mobility before they end up hurt, or worse. Others may need to lose weight or risk a heart attack. And then there’s sports performance clients who may need all of that at the same time.

Truthfully I almost walked away from the RKC about twelve months ago. I thought that we were in danger of falling prey to our own marketing and that we were missing sight of our core business. As many RKCs work as trainers, allow me to digress for a moment. We are in the fitness industry. Unless you make a majority of your income from training elite athletes you are not a strength coach. You are a fitness trainer or whatever other buzz word you choose to label yourself with. That means you operate in the fitness industry.

There’s no such thing as the strength industry. The majority of your clients will come to you seeking to look better, and likely drop body fat, and feel better through a combination of increased strength, movement and fitness. The faster you come to terms with that the better off your bank account will be.

One of my big issues last year was the removal of the weighted pull up from the RKCII standards. I have always felt that the weighted pull up forced people to be realistic with themselves about their own weight and take appropriate action. In the lifting world there is often a misperception that bigger is better and that a bigger guy is a stronger guy. Whatever happened to “skinny strength” the driving force behind Power to the People? Looking at the average weight of competitors at the London Games – 72kg for men and 56kg for women – tells us something. Namely that if you want to be truly athletic then body weight plays a large part in the equation and if you’re carrying too much weight then your chances of being successful diminish.

Not only that but returning to my point about being in the fitness industry it’s important to remember again why people come to us – to look better. If you can grab a handful of stomach fat do you really think you’re a great role model for the fitness lifestyle? And do you think your pull up might be easier if you dropped some of that? Being your product is always good for business. People can tell from a mile away if you’re actually truthful and stand 100% behind your product or if you’re just on the bandwagon of the next trend and hoping to cash in. Regardless of how you try to justify it to yourself your personal appearance counts very much in your clients’ eyes.

This also ties in to actually following in the steps of what the industry leaders are doing. When a guy like Cook comes out and says that to develop athleticism you need a base of mobility, stability and proprioception I pay attention. He doesn’t say you need strength as your first priority. In fact, both Cook and McGill state that after developing the base level of performance through mobility and stability you then work on endurance before moving onto strength and power.

So it’s strength last, not strength first. Movement is first and we need to recognize that the RKC is about teaching correct movement.

You can see this continuum developed through the HKC, RKC and RKCII. In the HKC we pattern the swing by teaching the hinge, the deadlift and numerous other drills. We use the goblet squat to develop the hip and spine mobility to squat with heavier loads. Then at RKC we add weight to these patterns but by placing the load asymmetrically we are still assessing movement quality, In addition, as anyone who has been to the RKC will tell you, there are lots of reps – endurance. Then finally at RKCII we develop strength and power with movements like the jerk and the heavy single press. From start to finish the system follows a path that I very much believe in.

The RKC understands its core business is in creating the best possible instructors. Instructors who know and understand how to teach and breakdown correct movement above all else. It often previously felt like all we were concerned about was the personal abilities of candidates instead of their teaching abilities.

I have to be honest and say that I have never had a client sign up with me because of what I could do. They’ve signed up with me because of what I can get them to do and the results they see in my other clients. Think about a high school PE teacher for a moment. Do you ever see one post on Facebook a picture of them out-performing the kids they are in charge of? I’d hope not because that kind of ego has no place in education. Our role as RKCs is no different and that show-off attitude as well as having the focus solely on our physical abilities has to go. It’s all about your clients – your kids in this sense – having the best experience they can with you, not about what you can do.

Without wanting to go too deeply into the psychology of training I also need to point out that if you base your sense of self worth on what you can do, when you get to forty and beyond you’re in for some depressing times. Performance drops as you age and there’s no hiding from it. The average age of medal winners at London was twenty-six. That was a good fifteen years ago for me. If the only thing that I derive pleasure from is breaking my personal records I’m going to have a very sad next forty years. But there’s no reason why we can’t be interested in trying to maintain performance, and by that I mean movement as that is the base, as we age.

For me, that is one of the reasons why I am so interested in movement based programs like the FMS and Primal Move – I instantly knew that these things could make a huge difference and that if I wanted to keep my clients healthy long term than we needed to add these kinds of elements into training.

Interestingly these are the exact same things that help to build athleticism. In a world that is overly sedentary we are seeing more and more people try to maintain fitness in later life. If they haven’t moved much since they were six (a likely scenario in these days of no physical education in schools and low sports participation numbers) they are going to need to build some movement patterns.

I hate to break it to you, and it pains me to admit it, but RKC training will actually hinder some athletic components if you avoid other movements (i.e. actual athletic events). Standing still lifting weights doesn’t make you athletic. In fact, other than make you better conditioned, it doesn’t make you anything – not tough, manly, hardcore or any of those adjectives. It only makes you stronger, and maybe fitter.

If you want to be more athletic you need to be involved in athletic endeavors. That can mean anything from martial arts to dance to triathlon to even things like the Crossfit Games or events like Tough Mudder.

(Here’s an interesting thing about the Crossfit Games – even though most of the events are lifting based the strongest doesn’t win. Last year a female competitor named Ruth Horrell from New Zealand came twelfth. The interesting thing about Ruth is that she competes for New Zealand as a weightlifter and is trying to gain Olympic selection for 2016. You’d have to realize that she would be a standout for strength amongst the ladies and yet she still didn’t win. The reason is obvious – her sports skills, and in the case of Crossfit that would be the huge anaerobic conditioning needed to be successful, are lacking. For her to get better at her sport she needs to play her sport more, not get stronger. This is across the board for athleticism – to win more you need better skills than your opponents, not just a single motor quality in high amounts. Martial artists will immediately understand this as they’ll have seen plenty of Herculean looking guys get beaten up and down the mat by someone who looks far more ordinary but has superior skills).

My interest in all training comes down to one thing – what can I learn so that my clients will be able to go out and use their fitness and enjoy their lives more? If that means they want to go in Tough Mudder, then I need to know how to help them run better and get over obstacles. But it also means I need to make them robust enough that they won’t break while running in training. If it means they want to do triathlons or martial arts or rock climbing or even hike to Everest base camp then I need the skills to help them do that too.

I’ve never heard of a client being stopped at the end of a triathlon and asked what their deadlift is, only their finishing time. In other words – the lifting is secondary to the performance. Making that vital difference to clients is all I really care about. I literally can’t afford to think that I only need one tool or one method to get them the result they’re paying me for. I can’t allow myself to think that all someone needs is to get stronger or be tougher. It’s just not that simple and it’s why I’ve traveled the world for the last decade to find the best answers and it’s precisely why I stayed on as an RKC at this point.

As trainers we often forget that our clients don’t share the same endless enthusiasm for training that we do. They want the maximum result from the least effort. There is one thing that has always stuck in my mind about the RKC:

A school of strength and movement with incidental conditioning. This allows a solid base of GPP to be formed that sports skill and conditioning can be built on.

I’ve been doing that with my clients since before I was an RKC. With a background in performance training both as a coach and an athlete that has always been my focus. We need to keep in mind as we forge ahead that every person will need something different and not allow ourselves to be distracted down the path that we enjoy the most when it comes to their training.

We need to make clients more athletic and find ways to embrace our own athleticism so that the base layer of movement and strength can be added to in an appropriate setting. Being in the gym is not the goal nor is having success in it. The goal has to always be making your clients’ lives better outside the gym. That is a product of many fitness qualities and methods.

That is RKC.

—

Andrew Read, Senior RKC, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognized as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.

How to be Zombie Fit—Not Zombie Fodder

January 23, 2013 By Andrew Read 5 Comments

Rule # 1 Cardio - Zombieland

The world isn’t black and white. It’s shades of grey. As kids we all see things very black and white – good and bad, yes or no, like or dislike. But as we age and gain some perspective we start to see things from multiple viewpoints and this empathy allows us to deal with the many compromises that are needed to successfully navigate all the various relationships we have from family to work.

But shades of grey don’t stick in your head like black and white messages do.

Squatting hurts your knees is a great example of a very black and white saying that has sadly stuck around for years beyond what should have been its use by date.

The one that ticks me off the most though is that cardio makes you weak. It’s funny; because when I was in the military we believed that cardio made you a more effective soldier. When I competed in martial arts tournaments almost qualifying for the Olympics we believed that cardio made you a better fighter too. But somehow people who stand still and only lift weights tried to get it in our heads that cardio is bad for you.

Recently I have been on a yearlong experiment to blend strength training with cardiovascular work. Initially this was a bit of a joke. You know, “the first rule of Zombieland is cardio” and all that. But as I started travelling down that path more and more I became more and more determined to prove the detractors wrong. Fitness, actual move-your-body-all-day long-fitness has been prized by warriors since time began. And that people were now saying it was unnecessary grated heavily against me.

In the RKC we have the expression “to press a lot you must press a lot”. It’s pretty self-explanatory and says succinctly that if you want to press heavy then you need to press with both volume and load to be successful. But somehow when we wanted to reverse engineer something like running fitness instead of being told “to run a lot you must run a lot” we got this confused message that implied deadlifting more would make you run better. I’m not sure if anyone else watches marathons but the Kenyans who win don’t look to me like they have big deadlifts!

So to see if you could get that kind of fitness I created a plan that would force me to see if I could have both strength and cardio. I spoke with my editor at Breaking Muscle about an ambitious plan to go from standing still lifting weights to completing an Ironman triathlon (3.8km swim, 180km ride, 42.2km run) in twelve months. Unfortunately for me she loved the idea, which meant I had to figure out how to get in the kind of shape that would allow me to complete one.

And so I began.

I ran a bit, I swam a bit and I rode a bit. Gradually those distances started to increase, as did the number of times per week I could sustain that kind of training. I’ve had all sorts of problems during training from numerous muscle tears to being hit by cars but I’m now at the point where I am coping with about twenty hours of endurance training per week. While my lifts in the gym suffered greatly to begin with, and still do a little due to the always present fatigue in my legs, they’re back close to what I was lifting before starting all this. My pull up and push up numbers are good (dropping some weight helps with those tremendously). And most importantly distance of any kind no longer scares me. My regular Saturday morning run is longer than a half marathon – I’ve got enough gas in the tank to out run any horde of zombies now.

The first lesson I learned also was one of those often laughed at RKC jokes – “to have strength endurance, first you must have strength”. Well, if you replace strength with the word speed you end up with the same thing. To go long quickly you need speed endurance. The way to gain speed endurance is to run both far and fast, just like in our pressing analogy, except this time we’re replacing the load you lift with how fast you run.

My weekly running consists of:

Two easy moderate length runs of up to forty-five minutes (think of these as the “light” days in Rites of Passage – a way to build volume without breaking your body down at all).
One hard day of speed work (I need to emphasise not sprints, but faster than race pace work. This is like a heavy day and has a big recovery cost on the body and should always be followed by an easy session such as one of the moderate forty-five minute runs).
A long run of up to three hours. (Again, treat this like a heavy day and make sure that the next run is short and easy).

My strength plan is KISS perfection:

Day 1

Squat 3 x 5
Handstand push ups + pull ups 3 sets of AMRAP
Extended push ups + extended pull ups 3 sets

Day 2

Deadlift 3 x 5
Handstand push ups + pull ups 3 sets of AMRAP
Extended push ups + extended pull ups 3 sets

The extended sets are done following a concept I first got from Jerry Telle where you start with the worst leverage and then gradually progress to the strongest. So start with close grip push ups for max reps, then rest about ten seconds and go to shoulder width push ups for max reps, then to wide push ups for max. For pull ups start with wide grip pull ups for max reps, then shoulder width for max reps, then shoulder width chins, then finally close grip chins. These are a great way to build some muscular endurance without adding much size – vital to keep weight down if your goal is to travel fast.

(I also need to add that normally I would perform some abdominal/ core work but I have a strained hip flexor right now and I’m avoiding stressing it as much as possible. I would follow the same sort of format though in going from a harder version of an exercise to an easier one such as hanging leg raises to lying leg raises).

I would add that if I were training just for an event like a Tough Mudder I could easily add in one or two more weights sessions. However on top of my running I also ride and swim and two is the number I can still fit in without seeing performance drop off.

Because I’m doing so much fitness work I don’t need swings or snatches. I hate to break it to you all, but unless you’re a novice runner or completely inexperienced with weights (like many endurance athletes) neither of those will make you a better runner on their own. You need to combine strength training with running and run both far and fast.

And when the zombies do come….

I’ll see you next to me while we laugh at all the cardio haters who didn’t make it.

—

Andrew Read

Andrew Read, Senior RKC, is head of Dragon Door Australia and Read Performance Training. Recognised as Australia’s leading functional strength trainer he is a regular contributor to Blitz, Inside MMA, International Kickboxer, Oxygen, Ultrafit and Breaking Muscle. His coaching background spans nearly twenty years having worked with many Olympic and world championship level athletes.