The Art of Manliness - The Swiss Army Knife of Fitness — How to Get Lean, Strong, and Flexible With Kettlebells Alone

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 What if there's one piece of fitness equipment that was affordable, didn't take up much space,

00:00:16.040 could get you both strong and flexible, and was fun to use? While that might sound too good to

00:00:20.860 be true, my guest, Pat Flynn, would say, you can find all those benefits in the old school kettlebell.

00:00:26.060 Pat, who's the author of Strong On, 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat,

00:00:32.020 Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility in 20 Minutes or Less, calls kettlebells the Swiss army knife

00:00:37.560 of workout tools and the minimalist ultimate secret fitness weapon. Today on the show,

00:00:43.020 we unpack why Pat's such an advocate for bells, but before we get there, we first take a dive

00:00:47.580 into his background and philosophy and why beginning a workout program takes faith. We then talk about

00:00:52.680 how to use kettlebells to get an all-around fit physique, including the three kettlebell weights

00:00:56.800 that make for an ideal starter set, the two best exercises for building muscle, the pyramid-shaped

00:01:02.380 program that can facilitate body recomposition, how to incorporate progressive overload in kettlebell

00:01:07.360 training, which kettlebell exercise coach Dan John considers the fat-burning athlete builder,

00:01:12.880 the 300 Swings Challenge that will help you take a Bruce Lee approach to fitness, and much more.

00:01:17.720 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash kettlebell.

00:01:22.680 All right, Pat Flynn, welcome to the show.

00:01:34.200 Brett, it is a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:36.780 So you are an entrepreneur, you're a philosopher, you got your master's in philosophy,

00:01:40.600 hopefully we can talk about that, but you're also probably most well-known for your work in fitness.

00:01:46.300 You're a fitness coach expert. You've written a lot about kettlebells in particular. We're going to

00:01:50.740 talk about that today and promoting sort of a general all-around approach to fitness. But let's

00:01:56.680 start with your story a little bit. In your books that you've written, you talk about how your interest

00:02:01.720 in fitness began with an embarrassing wet t-shirt contest in middle school. How did a wet t-shirt

00:02:09.300 contest in middle school get you down the path to where you're coaching people how to do kettlebells?

00:02:14.000 Yeah, thanks for helping me to relive this wonderful moment, Brett. I appreciate it.

00:02:18.660 And yeah, so I had some, you know, typical middle school type of friends, right? We were in a little

00:02:23.660 rock band. Nobody has heard of us. Trust me on that. And I was an overweight kid growing up. You know,

00:02:29.680 I was not athletic. I was your typical 90s kid, right? So just a whole bunch of microwavable food and

00:02:36.200 video games and all that good stuff.

00:02:38.480 Oh, man. You do miss it, though. You know, it's like it's hard not to be nostalgic about that

00:02:43.940 poison. But yeah, so I grew up on all that, had something of a weight problem. I was always kind

00:02:48.960 of the chunky guy among our friends. And I never really liked it. You know, it always bothered me. 1.00

00:02:53.060 I had friends. So this isn't like a super traumatic story or anything like that. But it was it was a

00:02:57.220 problem. And it all sort of came to, yeah, a climax when we decided in the middle of band practice to

00:03:04.060 just have a wet T-shirt contest among the guys. Right. And and I scored a solid victory on that.

00:03:10.360 And it was super depressing. I was like, I have to do something about this. You know,

00:03:13.540 I have a long line of obesity in my family, especially on on mom's side. And it was pretty

00:03:19.200 clear to me that if I if I didn't stage an intervention, probably now I was going to go

00:03:24.180 down a path I particularly did not want to go on. And like most people who set out on a fitness

00:03:29.060 journey, I was super confused. You know, my mom had all sorts of books on diet and exercise and

00:03:34.200 they all said different things. So I spun in circles for, you know, probably about a year or

00:03:40.140 two just trying to figure things out, having a little bit of success, but mostly frustration

00:03:44.000 until eventually I stumbled into a martial arts studio, a taekwondo studio. I didn't want to go to

00:03:50.080 the weight room in my high school because that's where a lot of my friends were. And I just didn't feel

00:03:53.940 like hearing the things that they would say if they saw me walk in. So I tried martial arts out

00:03:58.620 fell absolutely in love with it, had a phenomenal coach who was really in the physical culture.

00:04:04.500 And the value of a good coach can not be it's the most valuable thing in the world, right? Because

00:04:09.840 if you get set on a good path early on by somebody who knows what they're talking about and can hold

00:04:15.600 you accountable, I mean, that that changed my life. So that's that's a story in a nutshell.

00:04:19.740 Kettlebells came in a little bit later, more in college, but they were related to martial arts.

00:04:25.120 In fact, my taekwondo coach, as I was competing in college, introduced me to kettlebells just as

00:04:29.780 a way to increase my training efficiency. And yeah, it was love at first kettlebell swing.

00:04:34.600 Did you do anything like experiment with CrossFit or bodybuilding or powerlifting in between when

00:04:39.660 you started with the taekwondo and then moving to kettlebells?

00:04:43.480 Yeah, I was doing your traditional bodybuilding sort of bro split for a while. I amazingly missed a lot

00:04:49.940 of the CrossFit scene because when CrossFit was becoming very popular, that was when I was really

00:04:54.260 getting into kettlebells. So, you know, there were elements and certain aspects of my training that

00:04:59.400 certainly were influenced by what was going on in the CrossFit scene. But no, I never got fully wrapped

00:05:04.620 up into that. I sort of went just from your traditional let's do a bro split with lots of,

00:05:09.940 you know, traditional cardio on a treadmill, which is fine. I really don't have anything like

00:05:13.500 seriously against that. And it was pretty effective for me. But I was looking to increase efficiency

00:05:18.140 and try to find something that, you know, as a busy college kid would be a bit more directly

00:05:23.260 applicable to what I was interested in, which was competing in taekwondo.

00:05:26.500 So you're not only a fitness coach mentioned this earlier, you have your master's degree in

00:05:30.100 philosophy. Is there a particular branch of philosophy that you're interested in and have

00:05:34.140 been studying? Yeah. So I'm actually I'm doing the PhD right now. And where I focus is in philosophy

00:05:40.740 of religion, which is a weird name for a branch of philosophy because it's not a bunch of religious

00:05:45.620 people doing philosophy. It's really a form of systematic philosophy or what's sometimes called

00:05:50.440 worldview construction. So it's philosophers who try to establish like big picture theories of

00:05:54.960 everything. Like, how do we make sense of the broad scale phenomenon of the world, things like

00:05:59.940 causation and change and time and all that fun stuff? And is there a fundamental aspect to the

00:06:05.060 world? So totally unrelated to fitness, at least initially. But one of the things that goes into

00:06:10.800 my area of study is the question of the good life of ethics and meta ethics. And there are definitely

00:06:18.100 some links to fitness there. So I occasionally have my worlds collide, but most of the time I'm

00:06:24.560 kind of just, yeah, doing two separate things. Yeah. In your work, in the books you've written,

00:06:29.440 you talk about Aristotle a lot and then consequently Aquinas because Aquinas picked up on Aristotle and

00:06:35.380 tried to make connection between Greek philosophy and the religious life. Talk about it. Let's talk

00:06:40.780 about Aristotelianism. I'm a big fan of Aristotle. How has Aristotelianism, ethics, we may say maybe

00:06:48.700 metaphysics, how has it influenced your approach to fitness? Yeah, good. Great question. It's a big

00:06:55.720 one. We could spend a whole episode on it. You mentioned Aquinas. He's actually a guy I specialize

00:06:59.560 in. I focus on a lot of his metaphysical thought. And he, of course, as you said, Brett, is building on

00:07:05.040 and developing an Aristotelian account of the world, sort of a blend of Aristotelianism and

00:07:10.300 Neoplatonism. But Aristotle specifically thinks about ethics along the following lines. He's

00:07:16.120 often called a virtue ethicist or a natural law theorist. So Aristotle thinks that there is such

00:07:20.700 a thing as a human nature. And so you have a human nature. I have a human nature. And this nature is

00:07:25.800 determined to a particular end. And we can either reach that particular end. And if we do, we are like

00:07:32.680 a flourishing instance of human nature. Like we're most excellent to use Bill and Ted language,

00:07:37.600 or we can fail to reach that particular end. And so what is human nature? Well, it's something like

00:07:44.720 rational animality. So we're supposed to use our rationality to discern all the sorts of things that

00:07:50.460 are really good for us, because there's lots of things that are really good for us that cause us to

00:07:54.120 flourish as the kinds of things that we are. And of course, part of how this is done is through the

00:07:59.860 development or attainment of certain virtues. And virtues are really just perfections of our powers.

00:08:05.760 And you have some kind of big virtues, or sometimes called cardinal virtues,

00:08:11.220 things like temperance, fortitude, justice, these are like the hinge virtues, prudence is the other

00:08:16.680 big one. And the way this relates to fitness is along, I think, actually pretty obvious lines,

00:08:22.960 right? I think it's empirically obvious that it is good for us to pursue certain activities that

00:08:28.120 cause us to be healthy, to try and achieve that sort of ideal interplay of the organs and bodily

00:08:32.700 systems. So that's just important for just general physical health. And Aristotle's big on that. He

00:08:38.280 thinks that we're matter, soul composite. So he thinks that we have an immaterial soul, but he's

00:08:43.380 still very much committed to us being material beings as well. So how he thinks about the good

00:08:48.060 life very much concerns our physical embodiment, if you will. But exercise and diet can also be good

00:08:56.000 ways just to practice certain virtues, right? And we can think of the two cardinal virtues of

00:09:01.620 temperance and fortitude. So I mean, like fortitude is the gym and temperance is diet. It's kind of as

00:09:06.500 simple as that, right? Fortitude is doing the things that are tough, because we know that they're good

00:09:12.660 for us and having that sort of, you know, practical grit. That's what fortitude is about, doing the hard

00:09:17.280 things that are important. And temperance is being able to resist certain things that we know we should

00:09:22.340 resist at certain times, because they are not particularly good for us. They do not cause us

00:09:25.980 to flourish. And of course, various forms of dietary control and fasting fall right into that

00:09:31.540 very neatly. I mean, there's a good reason that fasting has always been used as a sort of moral

00:09:35.940 and spiritual discipline. It's because it very much is a way to help to develop yourself along these

00:09:40.780 sort of recitalian lines, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. So part of living a good

00:09:45.320 life was, you know, Aristotle said, you have to have a physically healthy body. He talks about it

00:09:49.800 explicitly in his Nicomachean ethics. And I like the idea that fitness can be a way to develop

00:09:55.480 these virtues, like you mentioned. In my experience, the most visceral thing that has taught me

00:10:01.060 virtue, these excellence in like temperance, prudence, practical wisdom has been my weight

00:10:06.380 training. You just, you experience it in your body. And I've noticed that whenever I try to convey this

00:10:11.300 stuff to young people that I mentor, I'm always going to like weightlifting or sports analogies,

00:10:16.720 because for some reason, I just think it, it lands more when you make that body connection.

00:10:22.360 They click, it clicks, especially for a lot of young men I found. And I've certainly had a similar

00:10:26.920 experience, Brett, like certain perennial truths just kind of like became obvious for me in the

00:10:31.720 weight room, but also with respect to certain vices too. So you got to be careful, you know,

00:10:36.280 for Aristotle, the virtue is, is the golden mean between two extremes of an excess and deficiency.

00:10:41.380 And you can see people who get into fitness, but they sort of obsess over it and they develop

00:10:46.400 certain vices because they don't have it properly ordered in relation to the other goods of their

00:10:51.180 life. And again, that's sort of a failure of, of, of prudence. So while fitness can be a fantastic

00:10:57.560 opportunity to acquire certain virtues, you have to be intentional about it. Of course, what kind of

00:11:02.680 goes into the mix of a lot of moral decision-making for Aristotle is not just outcomes, but intentions.

00:11:07.360 What is the intention you bring behind it? So I always encourage people focus on that, you know,

00:11:11.240 make sure you're going into this with the right sort of intention. Uh, because if you go in with

00:11:15.480 just various sort of narcissistic and ego comparative sorts of intentions, yeah, you might get stronger

00:11:20.800 and more muscular, but you could be giving yourself some sort of greater mental and spiritual problems

00:11:26.240 down the line. If that makes sense. Yeah. For Aristotle and the virtue ethic tradition, the results or

00:11:31.720 consequences are not only important, but the intentions behind the action that resulted in that

00:11:36.140 consequence are also just as important. Yep. 100%. Yeah. So you're someone who was baptized Catholic,

00:11:43.300 you became atheist, then found your way back into the church, and now you're getting your PhD in the

00:11:49.700 philosophy of religion. So have you seen a connection between pursuing excellence and fitness, not only with

00:11:55.940 philosophy, but also with faith? Yeah. So I'm, I'm sort of the cliche story of the guy that first got

00:12:02.920 into philosophy and it brought me very far away from faith and religion. And then the further I went

00:12:07.320 philosophically, especially asking questions about like fundamentality, these questions that I'm

00:12:12.340 interested in and are relevant to philosophy, religion, it brought me back. And at least it brought

00:12:16.520 me back to a philosophical understanding of God. And once you have that, it sort of opens you up to

00:12:22.040 the possibility of greater religious and spiritual ideas, which I eventually investigated and came to

00:12:28.300 hold rather firmly. So yeah, I think faith is, is a form of trust. It's a virtue. It's actually a

00:12:34.900 theological virtue in the tradition. Aquinas talks about faith as a theological virtue, which is for

00:12:39.520 him a true virtue, even higher than the cardinal virtues. What's the connection to fitness? Well,

00:12:45.340 in most forms of, of Christianity anyways, they sort of baptize Aristotelianism. So they, they kind of 0.82

00:12:52.700 like take Aristotle and they just move him a little bit further along. And they're essentially like,

00:12:57.240 Aristotle, you got a lot right, but there's just a few things that you're missing. The ultimate end

00:13:01.160 of the human being is not a natural end. It's a supernatural end. And it is to know what is most

00:13:06.540 true truth itself and to love what is most good goodness itself. And ultimately they maintain that

00:13:11.940 to be God, the God of classical theism specifically. Right. But God is as Aquinas would, would talk about

00:13:18.180 it. He has this kind of like very philosophical, somewhat spooky, but I think ultimately correct view

00:13:22.360 of God, that God just is subsistence existence or pure being and pure goodness itself. That when we

00:13:28.060 acquire certain virtues and we move along in the spiritual life, we're actually participating

00:13:32.420 in God. We're, we're sort of increasing ourselves along these, these relevant dimensions where we

00:13:37.500 become more perfect and we participate in the good. He's got this sort of neoplatonic aspect in his

00:13:42.980 otherwise Aristotelian philosophy. And of course, this is ultimately meant to orient us,

00:13:47.640 orient our will to our supernatural end, which is the beatific vision. So traditional Christianity 0.99

00:13:53.900 is, is Aristotelianism plus is the way I like to talk about. So, so you can just, the faith can

00:13:58.340 take everything that we already said about Aristotle and then integrate it into a larger perspective

00:14:03.940 where our ultimate good is fundamentally relational. It's relating to our creator in a particular way,

00:14:09.440 but to have that right sort of relation, you need faith. It is a theological virtue that makes

00:14:14.380 that possible. And also eventually you need to have perfection and moral perfection. So it integrates

00:14:20.780 or links up in a much higher, I think more extravagant, I think ultimately more beautiful

00:14:26.340 way too, but it's certainly not contrary in any sense, if that makes sense.

00:14:30.740 So, okay. It sounds like where Aristotelianism says, you know, be fit, be healthy to achieve

00:14:36.640 human flourishing or excellence. Your faith says to take that, you know, to keep that, but then also

00:14:42.220 point it to the divine, which is, you know, the, that, that big metaphysical perspective.

00:14:47.520 But do we see faith and fitness on a more day-to-day basis, like in the gym?

00:14:52.060 Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, just speaking personally, Brett, I mean, when I converted,

00:14:56.180 when I became Christian, I totally changed my intentions of what am I working out for?

00:15:01.800 I mean, look, I think I had all the wrong sorts of intentions starting out. I mean, originally my

00:15:06.840 fitness motivation was very negative. I just wanted to get away from being teased and made fun of,

00:15:11.440 but then it became like, once I started getting results, I thought I started looking good. It

00:15:14.880 became very narcissistic, right? It kind of became obsessive, ego comparative. So I don't think I was

00:15:21.000 doing it for particularly good reasons. A lot of the actions could stay the same. So this relates to

00:15:25.880 what we were talking about before, but the reasons I were, I am, am doing those actions. Those started

00:15:32.420 to fundamentally change. So I started thinking about, okay, well, how can fitness be used to

00:15:36.500 strengthen the relationships I have with other people, to help other people, to be an inspiration to my

00:15:40.740 kids, to make sure that I'm around for my kids, that I can teach them the virtues, that I can help

00:15:45.240 them practice the faith in certain unique and important ways. So I'm not sure if this is totally

00:15:49.600 answering your question, but the answer is it changed everything, right? At least for me, it

00:15:52.660 completely reoriented, not all the things I do. I still did a lot of the same things, but the reasons

00:15:58.860 for which I did them. Something I've seen, you know, if you use like Paul's definition of faith

00:16:03.300 in the Hebrews, right? It's like a substance of things hoped for, but not seen.

00:16:06.660 Not seen yet. Right. I think kind of playing it back to fitness, starting a fitness journey

00:16:11.860 requires some faith, right? You might cognitively know like, oh, if I do these things, I will get

00:16:16.760 in shape. But for a lot of people, they don't believe it. I've seen people when they first

00:16:20.740 start their fitness journey, they're just like, I don't, I don't think this is going to work.

00:16:24.000 Like I'm doing the thing and it's not working the way I wanted. But for the people that it

00:16:29.020 ends up working for, they have to like, kind of have faith. They have to have faith in the

00:16:32.280 process. Like faith is trust, right? They have to trust their coach. Like if you just keep doing

00:16:35.940 the stuff, it'll work out. Then you kind of have to use faith as sort of an animating force in your

00:16:43.180 action until you see the fruits of it. And then you, you just know.

00:16:48.800 And then you don't need faith anymore, right? That's the idea in heaven. Like that virtue drops

00:16:51.880 away because you don't need it. That's a great example, Brett. I think it's totally true is that

00:16:55.340 faith at the end of the day is an act of the will, right? Like you're not going to have this

00:16:59.040 certainty in many areas of life, but what do you have? Well, you have the grounds for reasonable

00:17:04.260 affirmation, oftentimes just testimony, but look, we have to take a lot of testimony on faith as

00:17:10.920 and reasonably affirm it all the time. There's so many things that we know where we're thinking

00:17:14.940 only because other people have told us, right? And presumably reliable people. So you mentioned

00:17:19.820 the coach. That's right. You might not believe it in a sense that you have complete certainty that

00:17:25.120 this is going to turn out the way that you want, but you make a particular act of the will to commit

00:17:30.360 yourself to this way of living and you commit yourself to the process. And then over time,

00:17:35.500 eventually, right, hopefully you don't even need that faith anymore because you've seen the fruits.

00:17:39.660 You've been through it. Yeah. Okay. So let's get into kettlebells specifically. In your new book,

00:17:45.580 Strong On, you make the case for how kettlebells can help you get strong, get lean, can even help you

00:17:52.960 increase mobility all in just 20 minutes a day. So that's some great copy there. But I think it's

00:17:58.160 true though, because you've, you yourself, you've seen the fruits bear out in your own physique.

00:18:02.080 And something you've talked about for a long time is that you argue for being a fitness generalist

00:18:09.120 over a fitness specialist. And when you're a fitness generalist, you're not trying to be the

00:18:15.060 strongest in the world. You're not trying to have a professional bodybuilder physique. You just want

00:18:20.460 to be physically skilled in a variety of areas. So you're, you're lean, you're mobile, you're strong,

00:18:27.440 you're flexible. So you're, you're, you're prioritizing general all around health. So why

00:18:33.800 are you such a big advocate for kettlebells and how do kettlebells fit into your generalist

00:18:39.120 fitness philosophy? Yeah, I think the kettlebell is something like the Swiss army knife of functional

00:18:44.000 fitness. And again, trying to set the right expectations. It's not the best tool for every

00:18:47.820 particular job, but it's good to great at pretty much all the jobs, right? Like if you want to

00:18:53.540 build strength, awesome. Kettlebells can do that. You want to put on muscle? Great. No problem. You

00:18:57.780 can definitely do that with kettlebells. You want to improve your mobility, flexibility? Check. You

00:19:02.100 want to improve your endurance and metabolic conditioning? I think they actually are probably

00:19:06.540 a killer app for that. They're definitely one of the best tools for that. So it's really the sort of

00:19:10.460 family man's or family woman's solution. I sometimes call them the, the, the minimalist ultimate

00:19:15.840 secret fitness weapon. So for the generalist, I think they're an easy and obvious choice,

00:19:20.520 especially if you're, I guess, like me a little bit and you know, you kind of like just workout

00:19:25.640 efficiency. You've got lots of things going on. I know you do do too, Brett. So you might be a little

00:19:30.280 bit time crunched. Can't spend hours in the, a day in the gym like you could back in college.

00:19:34.840 I think they're worth giving a solid look at for sure. And what's nice too, they're affordable.

00:19:40.640 They don't take up much space. Another nice benefit, they're portable. You could take them

00:19:44.680 with you on a road trip and keep continuing your training. You mentioned the limitations.

00:19:49.600 They're not great for everything. What are you thinking of the limitations of kettlebells?

00:19:52.560 Yeah, good. Like anything, every tool has certain limits. Some of these limits just concern exercise

00:19:58.200 selection, right? So if we're looking at the fundamental movements, they're kind of limited

00:20:02.120 with overhead pulling. No big deal. You know, throwing pull-ups, that's a good way to kind of balance

00:20:06.580 that out. You also don't get a whole lot of work for the feet, ankles, and calves. No big deal.

00:20:12.060 Throw in some jump rope and running. You can fill that gap pretty easy. So like anything else,

00:20:16.660 you know, they're not absolutely perfect. I don't think the kettlebell is the end all be

00:20:20.300 all. I just think they're, they're really darn good. Right. Especially if you're into this whole

00:20:23.920 generalist thing. Maybe we should like, for those who aren't familiar with the kettlebell, I mean,

00:20:27.840 we're assuming people know what a kettlebell is, but a kettlebell, it just looks like a cannonball

00:20:31.280 with a handle on it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's a cannonball with a handle. They became like

00:20:35.040 really popular. I don't know, Brett, like what, 15 years ago, something like that. And, and Pavel,

00:20:39.780 Satsulin, Dan John, who's a great friend of mine, who's been on your show before started bringing

00:20:46.080 them into the mainstream. And, you know, a lot of people thought, Hey, this is probably just going

00:20:50.980 to be a fad. It'll go away in a few years, but it really hasn't been. Now you walk into most gyms and 0.92

00:20:54.780 they have pretty decent kettlebell collections. They are a very traditional form of weightlifting.

00:21:00.600 The style and method of how they're used, of course, is varied over time, but I think that they are

00:21:06.060 just a tremendous tool for just putting good basic principles of strength and conditioning

00:21:11.160 into practice for busy people. So for those who want to give kettlebell training a try,

00:21:16.800 what size kettlebells do you recommend people get to start off with?

00:21:21.260 Yeah. Good question. I get this one a lot. So let's assume that you maybe have some sort of

00:21:25.520 general fitness background. You know, you don't have to be a professional athlete or anything like

00:21:28.940 that, but you've lifted weights before. Then for men, I generally recommend getting a set,

00:21:34.020 if you can, of three different kettlebells, something like a 16 kilogram, a 24 kilogram,

00:21:40.460 and a 32 kilogram kettlebell. People are weird. We still go by kilograms, right?

00:21:44.640 Sometimes they use poods.

00:21:46.280 Yeah, poods. The old pood, right?

00:21:47.800 The Russian.

00:21:48.880 Yeah. So yeah, it's just this weird traditional thing, but that's a good set. If that seems a

00:21:54.400 little bit too heavy, then just shift down, you know, to, I would say like a 12 kilogram,

00:22:00.080 a 16 kilogram and a 24 kilogram. And if between those different weights, you'll have sufficient

00:22:06.520 intensity for upper body exercises, lower body exercises, uh, like, you know, like goblet squats

00:22:12.680 and stuff like that. The explosive movements like swings, the grinds like military presses. So you'll

00:22:17.920 be able to sufficiently challenge yourself if you have that range for women, same idea, just shifting 1.00

00:22:23.360 again, a little bit down. I find that something like a six or an eight kilogram, you know, a 12

00:22:29.000 kilogram and a 16 or 20 kilogram is a good solid starting set. And you want sets of these different

00:22:35.220 three sizes. Is that the idea? Yeah. So you could just have just those three. You could double up if

00:22:40.320 you want, uh, because double kettlebell exercises are sort of that next step and they're really

00:22:44.380 effective, especially if you want to get more serious with the kind of limit strength and hypertrophy

00:22:48.620 training. I don't demand it or require it starting out. And the cool thing with kettlebells is you can

00:22:53.360 use, I mean, you can do this with any piece of equipment, right? But with kettlebells, you can use

00:22:57.320 two kettlebells of different sizes. You can have one size, heavier kettlebell in your right arm for

00:23:02.240 presses a bit lighter in your left, just switch sides. Every set works great. Oh, and none of the

00:23:07.040 benefit of kettlebells you were talking about, as we were talking about it, it came to my mind was

00:23:11.740 kettlebell training is fun. It's different because you're, you're swinging. It's, it's not like a barbell

00:23:17.080 where you're just going up and down. Yeah. Kettlebells, you can kind of move in different

00:23:20.580 planes. Yeah. Part of the reason I fell in love with it, it just felt like punk rock exercise.

00:23:24.760 It's very unconventional. I was into that sort of thing. You know, I was, I was, I was a teenager

00:23:28.800 when I first found them, you know, it's grungy. I started training with them in a real grungy

00:23:32.200 martial arts gym. It just felt different. It was more dynamic with kettlebells. I'm sure we'll talk

00:23:37.220 about this at some point. You can do complexes very seamlessly of just transitioning between different

00:23:41.660 exercises, you know, taxing multiple muscle groups and energy systems simultaneously.

00:23:46.280 Just felt like a cool way to train as a wannabe martial artist. I felt like, yeah, this is the

00:23:50.180 way I should be training. It was fun. It was engaging in a way that other forms of lifting,

00:23:54.680 which I was perfectly happy to do. They just didn't grip me in the same way.

00:23:57.980 Yeah. I've had those moments with my training where I get kind of, I do the bro split. I'm doing like

00:24:01.420 hypertrophy stuff. Rock on curls, but it's for the most part, I enjoy it, but there's periods I'm like,

00:24:05.860 ah, geez, I don't want to do this today. And I'll do a little kettlebell stuff because it's,

00:24:10.780 it just feels nice. It feels fun. It freshens things up.

00:24:12.980 And they're certainly compatible, right? Like you could do the bro split bodybuilding,

00:24:16.380 you know, three, four days a week. And then if you just want to keep up on your conditioning or

00:24:19.900 add a little bit of Metcon, which certainly can serve a purpose, you could just throw in a few

00:24:23.380 kettlebell complexes one to two days per week. So kettlebells don't have to replace your current

00:24:27.440 program for people who are interested. You could find a way that they could supplement or compliment

00:24:30.880 what you're already doing for sure.

00:24:33.460 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:24:35.360 And now back to the show. All right. So we got our kettlebells, these little cannonballs with

00:24:42.360 handles on them. What do we do with them? What are the basic kettlebell movements?

00:24:46.200 Yeah, good. So I cover six or seven in my book, something along those lines. And for the single 0.98

00:24:52.340 kettlebell exercises, there are a few that I always recommend that people focus on first.

00:24:57.000 Obviously there's the kettlebell swing. Many of your gentle listeners have probably seen this before.

00:25:01.460 Dan John calls it the fat burning athlete builder. It's an aggressive hip hinge. It's a power

00:25:06.520 movement. If people are unfamiliar with these exercises, just type my name and kettlebell into

00:25:11.900 YouTube and you'll find many tutorials on all of these. So the kettlebell swing is great. That's

00:25:15.680 your foundational kettlebell exercise. A good compliment to that is the goblet squat. Also goes

00:25:21.660 back to our friend Dan John. He, he actually invented the goblet squat as a legend has it. Yeah. Awesome

00:25:27.260 thing just to remind your hips, how they're supposed to work. Just good way to 1.00

00:25:31.360 even just kind of teach people the fundamental mechanics of a squat. We have for the upper body

00:25:35.920 military press, again, classic exercise, super effective. Then getting a little bit more advanced,

00:25:41.560 we have kettlebell cleans, which helps to get the kettlebell in what's called the rack position where 0.97

00:25:46.380 you initiate and finish lots of other exercises like the military press. And the clean is cool because

00:25:51.800 it helps teach you not just force production and reduction like the swing, but also force

00:25:56.080 redirection. It's an important athletic quality. And then we had the kettlebell snatch,

00:26:00.300 which is similar to a clean except for the kettlebell now winds up overhead. So really a big stroke of an

00:26:06.520 exercise phenomenal for just total body conditioning and endurance and grip strength. And then the kind

00:26:12.300 of weird exercise that people either really love or really hate when it comes to kettlebell training is

00:26:16.700 the Turkish get up. And this essentially has seven steps to it, depending on how you analyze it. 0.76

00:26:22.780 And it really is just getting up and off the ground while holding weight overhead. Really great

00:26:26.840 for strength, obviously, but stability and mobility as well, especially for the hips, knees, and

00:26:32.720 shoulders. Yeah. I like the Turkish get up. It works your brain because you have to think about it 1.00

00:26:37.460 a lot. If you haven't done it in a while, you think, okay, I got to, how do I have to move myself? So this

00:26:42.040 weight doesn't crash down on my face and I can get up into a standing position. I think it's a good one

00:26:47.020 for like fighting aging. It is. And I think it's a great conditioning tool too. A lot of people use

00:26:51.800 it just to lift a bunch of weight because you're using the stanchion of your skeleton. So it is a

00:26:56.680 good strength move, but two things about the get up. One is when people are learning it, I teach it in

00:27:00.540 the book actually from reverse, start standing, go to the ground and get back up. That's a bit more

00:27:05.580 intuitive way to learn the steps. You still got to pay attention to the steps, but it's, it's a little

00:27:09.920 less clumsy than starting from the ground. So that's called the reverse get up. I think that's a good

00:27:13.620 teaching tool. And then the cool thing about the get up is it's also just a great warmup and mobility

00:27:18.400 exercise. So as you're learning the move, just do like five to 10 minutes of get ups, you know,

00:27:22.460 in the morning or before your workout with either zero weight or very lightweight, just to get those

00:27:28.020 steps down and feel really confident with them. It'll, it'll serve as a great functional warmup for

00:27:32.860 your workout and teach you the pattern that, you know, pretty quickly you can start to throw some

00:27:36.320 serious weight around if you want to. So in the book, you get very specific with programming,

00:27:40.220 but just kind of high level, how do you program kettlebells to hit different goals? So maybe

00:27:45.960 you want to get stronger, say you want to get bigger muscles, hypertrophy, or like you just want

00:27:50.980 to get better conditioning. How do you program with the kettlebell? Yeah. Awesome. Let's take a few

00:27:56.240 examples. So I always, I always like to tell people, I say this in the book, like kettlebells aren't like

00:28:00.140 some magic tool that work fundamentally different than anything else. Like the principles of strength or

00:28:05.240 the principles of muscle or the principles of fat loss just are what those principles are.

00:28:08.960 I just want to show you how to implement those principles with kettlebells. So for example,

00:28:14.400 if we want to build muscle, this is a good one to start with, you know, there are certain principles

00:28:18.600 that go into that equation. And one is a principle related to volume. So how much you sort of lift

00:28:26.360 throughout the week. And generally, if you want to build muscle, you kind of need at least around

00:28:31.400 10 big sets per major muscle group or movement pattern per week, you know, and you can kind of divide

00:28:38.400 that up how you want. You might have, you know, one day it sets a three, another day sets a three

00:28:42.940 and another day sets a four, right? Something like that. So that's, that's one of the principles

00:28:46.380 for building muscle muscle takes for those who are trying to be minimalist. It's important to

00:28:51.560 understand that muscle takes the most amount of work. It's just the most demanding in terms of time.

00:28:55.320 And there's, there's no way around it. You can just be more or less efficient with your efforts.

00:28:58.840 The other key for muscle is intensity. So it's not just enough to lift a lot with respect to volume.

00:29:03.980 You also need to be lifting pretty hard and heavy. So you want to be working, you know,

00:29:08.020 close to technical failure for many, if not all of those sets and technical failure is not absolute

00:29:14.540 failure. Absolute failure is where the weight doesn't move anymore at all. Technical failure

00:29:18.820 is where you notice some sort of serious, obvious qualitative decrease in your reps. So,

00:29:25.100 you know, say you're doing pushups and your shoulders start really flaring out or you lose the

00:29:30.220 neutral spine. And it just looks like things are falling apart. That's the idea of technical

00:29:35.640 failure. And it usually comes right before, or is even simultaneous with absolute failure,

00:29:40.120 depending on the exercise. So you really want to push that. And those are kind of the two

00:29:43.460 principles for building muscle that aren't nutrition. There's nutrition principles as well.

00:29:47.980 So with kettlebells, what does that look like? Well, there's two exercises that are really great

00:29:51.660 for hypertrophy training with kettlebells. One is the double kettlebell clean and press. So you'll get a

00:29:57.200 lower body hinge there, but for the upper body traps, uh, shoulders and, and, and upper pecs and

00:30:03.180 triceps, this is a really good muscle builder, easy to get a good amount of, not easy because it's a

00:30:08.200 hard lift, right? But it's well suited for a higher volume type of training. And the other one is the

00:30:14.760 kettlebell front squat. Again, another very large compound exercise, high degree of neuromuscular

00:30:19.660 facilitation, classic muscle builder. Uh, so you could be pretty minimalist in your approach with

00:30:24.640 kettlebells where you could just kind of take just a few exercises. Those two, maybe add some

00:30:29.400 pull-ups or rows and some sort of hinge, whether it's a single leg deadlift, or even if you just

00:30:33.500 want to throw in a barbell for fun, just a barbell deadlift, and then just try and hit the sorts of

00:30:38.640 volume and intensity that we just talked about, Brett. And that would be one way that you can put

00:30:42.900 the kettlebell to use for a particular goal. And I have a program, you know, like that, not just in

00:30:46.800 my book, but also online. If people look up, it's called the Prometheus protocol. It uses double

00:30:51.740 clean and press and front squat to build muscle with kettlebells if people are interested in that.

00:30:55.740 How about kettlebells for, let's say, metabolic conditioning?

00:30:59.100 Yeah, good. So a lot of people use metabolic conditioning because they're interested in body

00:31:02.940 recomposition. So they hear that metabolic conditioning or metabolic resistance training

00:31:07.460 is really good for that. And that's true, right? Because this tends to burn a lot of calories and

00:31:11.640 increases that metabolic afterburn or EPOC exercise post-oxygen consumption helps you to kind of burn

00:31:17.240 more calories automatically rather than just manually. The thing I advise with this is that,

00:31:22.140 you know, treat metabolic conditioning like the bourbon to the sauce of a good training program.

00:31:25.680 A little bit goes a long way. People can contend to really overdo this. And I think that's one of

00:31:30.160 the lessons we've learned from CrossFit is that you can really push metabolic conditioning to an extent

00:31:34.640 that it can become, it's just horrible overkill, right? So if people are interested in body

00:31:39.680 recomposition, I actually recommend a pyramid style program. And by pyramid, I'm asking people to imagine

00:31:46.100 like the, uh, the old food pyramid, which has been, I guess, resigned and disgraced, but it's a good

00:31:50.840 illustration for exercise where at the bottom of the pyramid, you have a form of exercise that you

00:31:55.260 do every day. And that's something like brisk walking. So that obviously doesn't require kettlebells

00:32:00.140 at all, but it can also be a lot of mobility work, which you can do with kettlebells, you know,

00:32:03.820 light Turkish getups, windmills. This is the form of exercise that should not be that demanding.

00:32:08.940 You should be able to hold a conversation. You're just moving at a relatively low level. It's healthy.

00:32:13.140 It's good for your heart burns calories, right? Try and do that every day, 30 to 60 minutes in

00:32:17.860 the middle of the pyramid. You have your basic strength and hypertrophy training two to four

00:32:22.680 days per week. Nothing fancy here use Dan John's formula, you know, pick five big lifts, do three

00:32:29.080 sets of six to 12 reps and, you know, push the intensity. And for kettlebells, you can use military

00:32:34.680 presses, front squats, goblet squats, kettlebell swings, double cleans, single arm rows, tons to pick

00:32:40.940 from there, which all are super useful. And then the metabolic conditioning bread comes in at the top.

00:32:45.740 It's the top of the pyramid, the kind of dessert area. I like bourbon to the sauce of the program.

00:32:50.360 And really, I think here, honestly, just like one to two, maybe three days per week of 10 to 20 ish

00:32:59.620 minute sessions, because we're doing just really high intensity kettlebell complexes. And this is where

00:33:04.340 we string together different exercises, you know, things like swings, cleans, snatches, push presses,

00:33:11.360 lunges, perform them back to back with little to no rest in between to again, keep the system working

00:33:16.860 as a whole, you know, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, but switching through various muscle groups.

00:33:21.300 So not anyone is reaching failure. And that's what gives you that kind of awesome afterburn effect and

00:33:26.720 improves your metabolic efficiency. So that's a long answer. But I always like to situate metabolic

00:33:30.960 conditioning within a wider program. I don't usually have a program that it's like, it's just

00:33:34.520 Metcon. I don't think, I actually don't think that's the most efficient or effective way to go

00:33:38.040 for most goals. Okay. So yeah, Metcon is you're going to use the kettlebell to get really out of

00:33:43.320 breath and sweaty. Yeah. It's the, it's, it's the love to hate type of exercise. Yeah. Right. For sure.

00:33:48.720 So, you know, a key driver in getting stronger, increasing muscle mass is progressive overload,

00:33:54.240 which is you increase reps or you increase intensity, you know, with barbell training,

00:33:59.820 it's pretty easy to add intensity or add weight. So you can add five pounds to the bar, 10 pounds,

00:34:05.200 kettlebell, you just had the kettlebell. How do you make things harder with kettlebells when you

00:34:11.340 don't have that sort of incremental increase ability? Smart. It's, it's, it's a tough,

00:34:15.480 it's tougher with kettlebells. You have to get more creative, but I think it's a good exercise

00:34:18.520 because it forces you to think more about other variables and how to be creative. So you're right.

00:34:22.960 To get stronger, you, you need to use progressive overload. You need to push the intensity. You need to put

00:34:27.300 certain demands on your body that essentially says, Hey, you better get stronger. You're going

00:34:30.840 to like snap in half and your body eventually responds to that. So there's a couple like kind

00:34:35.660 of tricks, right? So let's just take the military press. This is a good example and a common place

00:34:39.540 where people get stuck. So military press is where you just press one or two kettlebells overhead and

00:34:44.880 say you're, you, you're like at a 24 kilogram, but the next size kettlebell is a 28 kilogram.

00:34:49.880 That's actually a pretty significant leap. Uh, especially if you, you feel like the 24 is

00:34:55.340 already pretty heavy. Uh, so what can you do here? There's a couple of different strategies.

00:35:00.780 One of course is just to find a kettlebell sizes in between. Unfortunately, kettlebells are so popular

00:35:05.600 these days. You can find smaller increments, but that requires a bit more financial investment.

00:35:10.540 Some people might want to make that or not, but that option is available. I don't typically use it,

00:35:14.780 but it's there now, whereas it wasn't there like 15 years ago. So that's nice.

00:35:18.840 What you can do of course is throughout your programming is you can just wave the other

00:35:23.840 variables, right? So, okay. Maybe you've, you're pressing the 24 for eight reps, uh, but you can't

00:35:29.640 press, uh, the 28 for eight reps, but maybe you can press it for three to five. Okay. Well then you

00:35:33.940 have one day in your programming where you're just working with that 28 at the lower rep range to begin

00:35:40.840 getting the type of stimulus that you need to eventually move it to the higher rep range.

00:35:45.600 So just working within other variables is a smart way to, to do that as well. In fact,

00:35:51.560 for pressing, just to give people a more concrete plan, if you want to get your pressing up,

00:35:54.200 I recommend having three days per week, one day where you just go really, really heavy,

00:36:00.000 like one to three reps, maybe five reps, heaviest bell you can handle. You're fighting for every one of

00:36:05.720 those reps. Uh, it's intense. Then you have another day of moderate intensity of volume,

00:36:10.840 so, you know, you'll go one or two bell sizes down, maybe working between eight to 12 reps,

00:36:15.740 many, many sets. Right. And then you have a third day of speed and power. So this is where you might

00:36:21.100 do push presses and jerks to work the other end of the force velocity spectrum. Cause you can get

00:36:25.340 stronger, not just by lifting more weight, but by lifting the same weight with more speed.

00:36:30.140 And with that approach, I think you'll find that you'll be able to make some pretty impressive

00:36:33.860 leaps in your overall strength without needing those small increments, the micro loading.

00:36:39.120 And you can really apply that to virtually any other lift as well. One more trick for the press

00:36:45.100 is there's exercise variations, right? So maybe you can't strict press a certain bell,

00:36:49.720 but what you could do, if you want to get to that next size heavier kettlebell is you could

00:36:52.700 long push press it. And a long push press is where you take a deep squat with the kettlebell in the rack,

00:36:57.080 and then you slowly come out of the squat using just the least amount of momentum that you need

00:37:03.260 to get the kettlebell overhead. So it serves as a sort of functional overload press.

00:37:06.940 And then you slowly through the eccentric, the downward portion of the movement,

00:37:11.160 lower the kettlebell down. And that stimulus, that overload stimulus will help you to get stronger

00:37:16.880 to the point where you'll eventually be able to strict press it. So those are a couple of different

00:37:20.160 strategies that I explore in my book and elsewhere of how you can get around this. Yeah. A little bit of

00:37:25.240 an annoying issue of not being able to micro load with kettlebells. Something you're famous for is

00:37:30.480 your 300 swings challenge. So it's 300 swings. It's every day for 30 days, right? Yeah, that's right.

00:37:37.840 It sounds kind of crazy, but it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Yeah. What led you to develop this

00:37:42.480 protocol? Yeah, boy. So like 11 or 12 years ago, I used to write for a fitness site that has since

00:37:49.020 gone somewhat, I think, out of business. And we were kind of brainstorming an idea for

00:37:55.000 a fitness challenge. And I don't know about you, Brett, but like way back when, when that movie

00:37:59.400 300 came out, I was like one of those kind of younger-ish dudes who was like, oh man,

00:38:03.300 those guys look so awesome. And like anything, anything 300 was like the thing. There's like

00:38:07.260 all sorts of 300 workouts that were going on and stuff like that. And most of them were just

00:38:11.160 almost complete nonsense. So as I, as I kind of like got older, I always thought there was

00:38:15.420 something cool. It's about like, yeah, 300 challenge, right? People like that sort of thing.

00:38:19.260 So, but how can we make it like useful and reasonable and difficult, but also purposeful

00:38:24.160 and to ensure that people aren't going to like get totally burnt out or injured. And that's where

00:38:28.160 he came up with the 300 swings per day kettlebell challenge. And the kettlebell swing is Dan John

00:38:32.220 calls it the fat burning athlete builder. It's such a bang for buck exercise. You know, it builds your

00:38:36.780 conditioning, it builds your power. It builds what people call kettle booty, your glutes, strengthens

00:38:41.960 the low back, strengthens the hamstrings, burns a mountain of calories. There's a reason people

00:38:46.580 love the kettlebell swing. It's just such an awesome exercise and it generally lends itself

00:38:50.960 well to a higher frequency approach as long as you're smarter about it. So I put together

00:38:55.740 the 300 swings kettlebell challenge to accomplish two things. One to help improve people's general

00:39:00.160 conditioning and power with kettlebell swings and also give them an opportunity to take a

00:39:04.020 Bruce Lee approach to exercise. You know, Bruce Lee's like, Hey, don't throw a thousand

00:39:07.820 kicks, throw one kick a thousand times. And the idea there is you focus really with a ton

00:39:13.800 of intention. There's that word again on all the nuances of a particular technique

00:39:18.180 with every repetition in order to master it. And I think people would do well to approach

00:39:23.320 exercise with that mindset where we're not just trying to lift heavy load, but we're trying

00:39:27.940 to move with beauty, with elegance, with precision to have real bodily control. And I think the kettlebell

00:39:33.800 swing is an awesome athletic movement that is worth just trying to make it look good and

00:39:39.540 elegant. And when you have 300 reps a day to practice it, you can do that. All right. It's,

00:39:44.480 it's a good amount of practice. Yeah. Pavel says strength is a skill. You have to practice the skill

00:39:49.340 of strength. Yeah. It's so true. It's like anything else it's technique and how you organize your

00:39:53.480 practice. But I always, I always tell people, you know, look, if you're starting out, you don't

00:39:57.580 necessarily want to start with 300 swings every single day. You can stagger it, you know, build up the

00:40:02.680 volume gradually. And also when I run these challenges and in the book, we're not doing the swings

00:40:07.400 exactly the same way every day. Sometimes we're going very light. Sometimes we're spreading the

00:40:11.080 swings out throughout the day. We use ladders, we use EMOMs, we use different swing variations.

00:40:16.460 So there's some intentional variety. So it's, it's pretty intentional. And I think pretty well

00:40:21.460 thought out that it serves a useful purpose without just being like some crazy over the top

00:40:25.320 fitness challenge. When you do the 300 swings challenge, is this like your, what you're doing

00:40:29.860 for your training that day? Are you doing that in addition to your regular training? Yeah, it could be

00:40:33.840 either. So I think it does function as a nice standalone and I have some options for people

00:40:38.100 to just fill some gaps, you know, to put in some goblet squats and presses to make sure they're not

00:40:41.600 just training hinges. But I think it also is manageable enough that you can staple it to an

00:40:46.340 already existing program. Of course it, it always depends. Like what is that program? How demanding

00:40:50.180 is it? 300 swings a day isn't particularly easy, but it's reasonable enough that it can definitely be

00:40:55.140 conjoined to an existing program.

00:40:56.900 So we've talked about how you can use kettlebells to get stronger, build muscle, increase your metabolic

00:41:01.780 conditioning. You've mentioned you can use kettlebells to improve mobility, like the Turkish 1.00

00:41:06.160 getup. Any other ways you can use a kettlebell to improve your mobility?

00:41:09.760 Yeah, the kettlebell windmill is great. That's something I recommend people incorporate into

00:41:13.240 their routine as soon as possible. And the windmill is nice because with kettlebells, it's not really

00:41:17.500 a side bend, which you sometimes see in yoga. Really what the windmill is, is a combination of hip

00:41:22.640 hinging and thoracic rotation. And this is just a phenomenal exercise to sort of cure what ails

00:41:29.000 modern America, right? So, I mean, we, we have the vulture posture and we're constantly over a

00:41:34.160 computer and we're just in this slumped position all the time. So the windmill is just a really,

00:41:38.160 really great way to open the hips, to loosen the posterior chain, the tight hamstrings, the

00:41:44.580 shoulders and the upper back. So in terms of bang for buck mobility exercises, that's way up there.

00:41:49.180 People might also want to check out kettlebell halos. And in fact, I think the goblet squat itself

00:41:53.940 is just such a good exercise for loosening the hips, knees, and ankles. And what you can do is

00:41:59.200 you can just sit in the bottom of the goblet squat with a light kettlebell and use your elbows to pry

00:42:03.640 your knees out side to side, find space in your hips and just spend time there. It's super simple.

00:42:08.940 You could just do it throughout the day just to break up those sticky hip joints, you know,

00:42:14.540 from all those hours of sitting. So a few exercises really go a long way with kettlebells on that front.

00:42:19.220 Yeah. Another way I've used kettlebells for mobility is I'll do this stretch. It's for the

00:42:23.220 hamstrings where I'll prop a foot up on a bench and then I'll have the kettlebell in my hands and

00:42:28.600 I'll just kind of lower it down as far as I can go. Does that make sense? Yeah. You're teaching me

00:42:34.160 something new. This sounds really great. Continue. I want to hear the rest of it. Yeah. And then you

00:42:37.160 just, you're kind of doing this deep, you feel it a lot in your hamstring and in your butt, your

00:42:41.920 glute of that leg that's propped up. And I'll just hold it down there. And cause like the weight kind

00:42:46.440 of helps you go down a little bit further and further, and then you can pull it back up. And then,

00:42:50.720 so that's another one that I use. Well, that was what you point out there,

00:42:53.240 Brett is something that I think is, is seriously underappreciated is that you can and should use

00:42:58.480 weights for your mobility and flexibility training. You know, weighted exercises are really effective

00:43:04.740 for improving mobility and flexibility, assuming that you're judicious in how much weight you apply

00:43:09.440 and you're not going like too crazy right out of the gate. Yeah. Another thing I like about the kettlebell

00:43:14.080 is that you can use it for specific training, but then you can also use it for movement snacks

00:43:19.140 throughout the day. I have a kettlebell in one of the rooms in my house and sometimes I'll just

00:43:23.480 walk by it and do a couple swings, nothing intense, but it's kind of a movement snack,

00:43:28.740 get the blood going, kind of invigorate myself. I'll also do carries with it. So the other day I was,

00:43:34.460 I did a, what's it, a waiter carry. So I lifted up the kettlebell with one arm,

00:43:40.820 fully extended, like I'm a waiter carrying a tray. And I just kind of walked around my house like a

00:43:45.220 weirdo. Um, but it's your house. That's what you're allowed to do, right? Yeah. Yeah. It felt

00:43:49.600 good. So yeah, carry exercises, I think are another benefit of kettlebells. Yeah, totally agree. And

00:43:54.540 the idea of movement snacks is something that I've talked about for a while. I certainly didn't invent

00:43:58.780 them. I'm just a fan of them like you are. And the idea is, Hey, kettlebells are kind of cool

00:44:02.660 in so far as you can just leave them at, you know, throughout your house. And the challenge is like

00:44:07.400 anytime you go by that kettlebell, do something with it. Maybe you pick it up and move it to the other room

00:44:11.560 where you're going. Maybe the kettlebell follows you around your house all day long. In fact,

00:44:15.980 that's what they used to torture us with in the old school kettlebell certs that throughout the

00:44:19.480 whole weekend, you had to bring your kettlebell everywhere to the bathroom. If you went to the

00:44:22.420 bathroom, you had to do it. So you could do that in the house. It's, it's a little weird, but

00:44:25.640 they tell you it adds up. And whenever you get to a new room, you could do a set of swings or squats

00:44:30.400 or a mobility exercise. And the idea here is that look, exercise and movement is cumulative. We can

00:44:35.940 totally break free of the mindset that we have to do like all of our exercise in this condensed

00:44:39.360 period of time at a gym. No, it adds up. It's all valuable. So little bits here and there go a

00:44:44.300 long way for sure. The other benefit of kettlebells, we mentioned it earlier. You can take them on the

00:44:49.140 road. If you do a road trip, my wife and I have done that, but I've also seen, have you seen these

00:44:53.320 on the market? They're sort of like bags that you can fill up with water. If you're at a hotel room,

00:44:58.360 have you seen these? No, I have not. Okay. So that's something else. There's on the market. Now you

00:45:03.020 can buy these bags. They have handles on them and somehow you fill them up with water. And if you fill

00:45:08.180 them up all the way, it gives you a certain amount of weight. And it functions as a kettlebell without

00:45:11.860 having it. It functions as a kettlebell, yeah. That's really cool. I have to check that out.

00:45:14.900 So you could fly with it. Yeah. So yeah, it's better than trying to convince them to let you

00:45:19.200 take it as a carry on, which I have tried before unsuccessfully. Made you check that. One thing you

00:45:25.020 talk about too in all your work is, oh, let's say someone gets started and it's always easy to start

00:45:30.500 something, but you always reach this point where you're going to hit a plateau and progress slows down or

00:45:36.840 maybe it stalls. And that's when people start losing faith. Like we talked about earlier.

00:45:42.800 Do you have any advice for people? Yes. Okay. Stay motivated when that progress slows and they

00:45:48.400 feel like, oh, this is not working anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. So I actually have a few

00:45:52.980 things to say about this and I think this is really important. It doesn't get talked about enough.

00:45:56.400 So first thing is right expectations always. And I always tell people that plateaus are part of the

00:46:01.420 process, right? There is no process of self-improvement without plateaus. And success, especially

00:46:06.460 if you've been at something for a while, it never just kind of slopes up in this beautiful

00:46:12.420 ascent like you want, right? It's more like a very uneven, weird looking flight of stairs,

00:46:18.100 right? You just kind of make these kind of weird leaps at almost random times where it's like

00:46:22.240 you jump up and you have this huge leap of progress and then you kind of plateau for a

00:46:26.440 while. Then you have a small leap and you plateau for a while. Then you have another medium leap and you

00:46:30.320 plateau. And then it's just this jagged thing. That's just what it looks like in lifting. I can

00:46:36.100 certainly tell people that's what it's like when it comes to being a musician. That's certainly my

00:46:40.700 life of playing guitar, right? Huge plateaus where I don't think I'll get past it. And then suddenly

00:46:45.660 I wake up one day and I got the lick or something like that. So one is expectations, getting people

00:46:50.080 to understand that plateaus are not setbacks. They are just part of the process and it's okay.

00:46:55.060 You can chill. In terms for maintaining motivation, I think there's two important things

00:46:59.240 to talk about with respect to motivation, starting out and ongoing. People say,

00:47:03.900 how do I get motivated for something? And I think that's not the best way to think about it

00:47:08.780 because motivation, at least starting out for a lot of people, isn't intrinsic enough. And so we

00:47:15.600 can make a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. What people want is intrinsic

00:47:21.280 motivation. This is the idea of self-reliance where you're just able to do the hard things day in and

00:47:26.260 day out because you just have the grit, you have the fortitude, you have the habit, right? You've

00:47:31.820 developed the habit. But very, very few people are intrinsically motivated starting out going into a

00:47:38.140 discipline. So what do you do? What do you need there? Well, you need extrinsic motivation. And

00:47:42.880 this maps my own fitness journey. I was not super intrinsically motivated starting out. I would

00:47:48.320 frequently give up when I started working out. I would quit the diets. I started like three days in

00:47:53.500 until I went to that martial arts studio and found external structures to support me. I had coaches that

00:48:00.060 held me accountable. I got skin in the game. I publicly pronounced my goals, right? I had people

00:48:05.340 guiding me, encouraging me. And then what happens is with these external structures of support,

00:48:11.860 coaches being the big one or just wider communities of people that will encourage you and hold you

00:48:16.260 accountable. What happens is you then, after trusting in the process and seeing the results,

00:48:22.380 and there's good studies on this, Brett, it's once people see the results after having already

00:48:26.620 trusted that they then begin to develop intrinsic motivation. So the motivation comes after the

00:48:32.580 discipline. It's kind of this paradox, this chicken and the egg thing. And the way you solve it is you

00:48:37.580 just stop focusing on intrinsic motivation and look wherever you need for extrinsic motivation,

00:48:43.160 having those structures in place to get started and to keep you going when things get tough until

00:48:46.940 you've seen enough of the results that you then do develop that sort of self-reliance or inner drive

00:48:52.320 that those external structures can eventually drop away.

00:48:54.440 That's awesome. I love it. Well, Pat, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go

00:48:57.860 to learn more about the book and your work? Yeah, thank you so much. Well, the primary

00:49:01.280 website is strongon.com. So just the name of the book. You can find me on YouTube. I have a YouTube

00:49:07.620 channel called Kettlebell Quickies, a new YouTube channel of mine. I have a couple, but that's the

00:49:11.320 newest. And Kettlebell Quickies is where I share just time crunched kettlebell workouts and training

00:49:16.520 ideas for busy people who want to be fitness generalists. And I'm on the usual social media places as

00:49:21.480 well. If you just kind of search around for, well, I don't want to just say Pat Flynn because there's

00:49:25.220 a couple other Pat Flynn's out there and I'm only one of them. So if you type my name in with

00:49:28.620 kettlebells, you'll be able to find me. Awesome. Well, Pat Flynn, thanks for your time. It's been

00:49:31.640 a pleasure. Thank you, Brett. It's been a joy. My guest today was Pat Flynn. He's the author of

00:49:35.920 the book Strong On. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information

00:49:40.440 about the book at the website strongon.com. That's S-T-R-O-N-G-O-N.com. Also check out our show notes at

00:49:47.140 awim.is slash kettlebells. We can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:49:58.820 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:50:02.840 artofmanliness.com. We can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:50:06.720 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

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00:50:13.800 a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a

00:50:17.380 friend or family member you think with something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued

00:50:21.020 support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind time to listen to the AWIM podcast, but put what

00:50:25.300 you've heard into action.

00:50:26.360 avoid it.

00:50:27.420 love it.

00:50:27.700 love it.

00:50:31.640 so

00:50:41.580 you

00:50:45.000 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - December 18, 2024

The Swiss Army Knife of Fitness — How to Get Lean, Strong, and Flexible With Kettlebells Alone

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