The Swiss Army Knife of Fitness — How to Get Lean, Strong, and Flexible With Kettlebells Alone
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Summary
Pat Flynn is the author of Strong On, 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility in 20 Minutes or Less. He calls kettlebells the Swiss Army knife of workout tools, and the minimalist ultimate secret fitness weapon. Today on the show, we unpack why Pat s such an advocate for bells, but before we get there, we first take a dive into his background and philosophy, and why beginning a workout program takes faith.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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What if there's one piece of fitness equipment that was affordable, didn't take up much space,
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could get you both strong and flexible, and was fun to use? While that might sound too good to
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be true, my guest, Pat Flynn, would say, you can find all those benefits in the old school kettlebell.
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Pat, who's the author of Strong On, 101 Minimalist Kettlebell Workouts to Blast Fat,
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Build Muscle, and Boost Flexibility in 20 Minutes or Less, calls kettlebells the Swiss army knife
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of workout tools and the minimalist ultimate secret fitness weapon. Today on the show,
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we unpack why Pat's such an advocate for bells, but before we get there, we first take a dive
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into his background and philosophy and why beginning a workout program takes faith. We then talk about
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how to use kettlebells to get an all-around fit physique, including the three kettlebell weights
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that make for an ideal starter set, the two best exercises for building muscle, the pyramid-shaped
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program that can facilitate body recomposition, how to incorporate progressive overload in kettlebell
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training, which kettlebell exercise coach Dan John considers the fat-burning athlete builder,
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the 300 Swings Challenge that will help you take a Bruce Lee approach to fitness, and much more.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash kettlebell.
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Brett, it is a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.
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So you are an entrepreneur, you're a philosopher, you got your master's in philosophy,
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hopefully we can talk about that, but you're also probably most well-known for your work in fitness.
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You're a fitness coach expert. You've written a lot about kettlebells in particular. We're going to
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talk about that today and promoting sort of a general all-around approach to fitness. But let's
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start with your story a little bit. In your books that you've written, you talk about how your interest
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in fitness began with an embarrassing wet t-shirt contest in middle school. How did a wet t-shirt
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contest in middle school get you down the path to where you're coaching people how to do kettlebells?
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Yeah, thanks for helping me to relive this wonderful moment, Brett. I appreciate it.
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And yeah, so I had some, you know, typical middle school type of friends, right? We were in a little
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rock band. Nobody has heard of us. Trust me on that. And I was an overweight kid growing up. You know,
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I was not athletic. I was your typical 90s kid, right? So just a whole bunch of microwavable food and
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Oh, man. You do miss it, though. You know, it's like it's hard not to be nostalgic about that
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poison. But yeah, so I grew up on all that, had something of a weight problem. I was always kind
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of the chunky guy among our friends. And I never really liked it. You know, it always bothered me.
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I had friends. So this isn't like a super traumatic story or anything like that. But it was it was a
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problem. And it all sort of came to, yeah, a climax when we decided in the middle of band practice to
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just have a wet T-shirt contest among the guys. Right. And and I scored a solid victory on that.
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And it was super depressing. I was like, I have to do something about this. You know,
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I have a long line of obesity in my family, especially on on mom's side. And it was pretty
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clear to me that if I if I didn't stage an intervention, probably now I was going to go
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down a path I particularly did not want to go on. And like most people who set out on a fitness
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journey, I was super confused. You know, my mom had all sorts of books on diet and exercise and
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they all said different things. So I spun in circles for, you know, probably about a year or
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two just trying to figure things out, having a little bit of success, but mostly frustration
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until eventually I stumbled into a martial arts studio, a taekwondo studio. I didn't want to go to
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the weight room in my high school because that's where a lot of my friends were. And I just didn't feel
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like hearing the things that they would say if they saw me walk in. So I tried martial arts out
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fell absolutely in love with it, had a phenomenal coach who was really in the physical culture.
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And the value of a good coach can not be it's the most valuable thing in the world, right? Because
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if you get set on a good path early on by somebody who knows what they're talking about and can hold
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you accountable, I mean, that that changed my life. So that's that's a story in a nutshell.
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Kettlebells came in a little bit later, more in college, but they were related to martial arts.
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In fact, my taekwondo coach, as I was competing in college, introduced me to kettlebells just as
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a way to increase my training efficiency. And yeah, it was love at first kettlebell swing.
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Did you do anything like experiment with CrossFit or bodybuilding or powerlifting in between when
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you started with the taekwondo and then moving to kettlebells?
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Yeah, I was doing your traditional bodybuilding sort of bro split for a while. I amazingly missed a lot
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of the CrossFit scene because when CrossFit was becoming very popular, that was when I was really
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getting into kettlebells. So, you know, there were elements and certain aspects of my training that
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certainly were influenced by what was going on in the CrossFit scene. But no, I never got fully wrapped
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up into that. I sort of went just from your traditional let's do a bro split with lots of,
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you know, traditional cardio on a treadmill, which is fine. I really don't have anything like
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seriously against that. And it was pretty effective for me. But I was looking to increase efficiency
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and try to find something that, you know, as a busy college kid would be a bit more directly
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applicable to what I was interested in, which was competing in taekwondo.
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So you're not only a fitness coach mentioned this earlier, you have your master's degree in
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philosophy. Is there a particular branch of philosophy that you're interested in and have
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been studying? Yeah. So I'm actually I'm doing the PhD right now. And where I focus is in philosophy
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of religion, which is a weird name for a branch of philosophy because it's not a bunch of religious
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people doing philosophy. It's really a form of systematic philosophy or what's sometimes called
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worldview construction. So it's philosophers who try to establish like big picture theories of
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everything. Like, how do we make sense of the broad scale phenomenon of the world, things like
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causation and change and time and all that fun stuff? And is there a fundamental aspect to the
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world? So totally unrelated to fitness, at least initially. But one of the things that goes into
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my area of study is the question of the good life of ethics and meta ethics. And there are definitely
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some links to fitness there. So I occasionally have my worlds collide, but most of the time I'm
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kind of just, yeah, doing two separate things. Yeah. In your work, in the books you've written,
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you talk about Aristotle a lot and then consequently Aquinas because Aquinas picked up on Aristotle and
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tried to make connection between Greek philosophy and the religious life. Talk about it. Let's talk
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about Aristotelianism. I'm a big fan of Aristotle. How has Aristotelianism, ethics, we may say maybe
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metaphysics, how has it influenced your approach to fitness? Yeah, good. Great question. It's a big
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one. We could spend a whole episode on it. You mentioned Aquinas. He's actually a guy I specialize
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in. I focus on a lot of his metaphysical thought. And he, of course, as you said, Brett, is building on
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and developing an Aristotelian account of the world, sort of a blend of Aristotelianism and
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Neoplatonism. But Aristotle specifically thinks about ethics along the following lines. He's
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often called a virtue ethicist or a natural law theorist. So Aristotle thinks that there is such
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a thing as a human nature. And so you have a human nature. I have a human nature. And this nature is
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determined to a particular end. And we can either reach that particular end. And if we do, we are like
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a flourishing instance of human nature. Like we're most excellent to use Bill and Ted language,
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or we can fail to reach that particular end. And so what is human nature? Well, it's something like
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rational animality. So we're supposed to use our rationality to discern all the sorts of things that
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are really good for us, because there's lots of things that are really good for us that cause us to
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flourish as the kinds of things that we are. And of course, part of how this is done is through the
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development or attainment of certain virtues. And virtues are really just perfections of our powers.
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And you have some kind of big virtues, or sometimes called cardinal virtues,
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things like temperance, fortitude, justice, these are like the hinge virtues, prudence is the other
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big one. And the way this relates to fitness is along, I think, actually pretty obvious lines,
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right? I think it's empirically obvious that it is good for us to pursue certain activities that
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cause us to be healthy, to try and achieve that sort of ideal interplay of the organs and bodily
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systems. So that's just important for just general physical health. And Aristotle's big on that. He
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thinks that we're matter, soul composite. So he thinks that we have an immaterial soul, but he's
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still very much committed to us being material beings as well. So how he thinks about the good
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life very much concerns our physical embodiment, if you will. But exercise and diet can also be good
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ways just to practice certain virtues, right? And we can think of the two cardinal virtues of
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temperance and fortitude. So I mean, like fortitude is the gym and temperance is diet. It's kind of as
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simple as that, right? Fortitude is doing the things that are tough, because we know that they're good
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for us and having that sort of, you know, practical grit. That's what fortitude is about, doing the hard
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things that are important. And temperance is being able to resist certain things that we know we should
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resist at certain times, because they are not particularly good for us. They do not cause us
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to flourish. And of course, various forms of dietary control and fasting fall right into that
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very neatly. I mean, there's a good reason that fasting has always been used as a sort of moral
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and spiritual discipline. It's because it very much is a way to help to develop yourself along these
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sort of recitalian lines, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. So part of living a good
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life was, you know, Aristotle said, you have to have a physically healthy body. He talks about it
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explicitly in his Nicomachean ethics. And I like the idea that fitness can be a way to develop
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these virtues, like you mentioned. In my experience, the most visceral thing that has taught me
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virtue, these excellence in like temperance, prudence, practical wisdom has been my weight
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training. You just, you experience it in your body. And I've noticed that whenever I try to convey this
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stuff to young people that I mentor, I'm always going to like weightlifting or sports analogies,
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because for some reason, I just think it, it lands more when you make that body connection.
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They click, it clicks, especially for a lot of young men I found. And I've certainly had a similar
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experience, Brett, like certain perennial truths just kind of like became obvious for me in the
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weight room, but also with respect to certain vices too. So you got to be careful, you know,
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for Aristotle, the virtue is, is the golden mean between two extremes of an excess and deficiency.
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And you can see people who get into fitness, but they sort of obsess over it and they develop
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certain vices because they don't have it properly ordered in relation to the other goods of their
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life. And again, that's sort of a failure of, of, of prudence. So while fitness can be a fantastic
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opportunity to acquire certain virtues, you have to be intentional about it. Of course, what kind of
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goes into the mix of a lot of moral decision-making for Aristotle is not just outcomes, but intentions.
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What is the intention you bring behind it? So I always encourage people focus on that, you know,
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make sure you're going into this with the right sort of intention. Uh, because if you go in with
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just various sort of narcissistic and ego comparative sorts of intentions, yeah, you might get stronger
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and more muscular, but you could be giving yourself some sort of greater mental and spiritual problems
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down the line. If that makes sense. Yeah. For Aristotle and the virtue ethic tradition, the results or
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consequences are not only important, but the intentions behind the action that resulted in that
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consequence are also just as important. Yep. 100%. Yeah. So you're someone who was baptized Catholic,
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you became atheist, then found your way back into the church, and now you're getting your PhD in the
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philosophy of religion. So have you seen a connection between pursuing excellence and fitness, not only with
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philosophy, but also with faith? Yeah. So I'm, I'm sort of the cliche story of the guy that first got
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into philosophy and it brought me very far away from faith and religion. And then the further I went
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philosophically, especially asking questions about like fundamentality, these questions that I'm
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interested in and are relevant to philosophy, religion, it brought me back. And at least it brought
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me back to a philosophical understanding of God. And once you have that, it sort of opens you up to
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the possibility of greater religious and spiritual ideas, which I eventually investigated and came to
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hold rather firmly. So yeah, I think faith is, is a form of trust. It's a virtue. It's actually a
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theological virtue in the tradition. Aquinas talks about faith as a theological virtue, which is for
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him a true virtue, even higher than the cardinal virtues. What's the connection to fitness? Well,
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in most forms of, of Christianity anyways, they sort of baptize Aristotelianism. So they, they kind of
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like take Aristotle and they just move him a little bit further along. And they're essentially like,
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Aristotle, you got a lot right, but there's just a few things that you're missing. The ultimate end
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of the human being is not a natural end. It's a supernatural end. And it is to know what is most
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true truth itself and to love what is most good goodness itself. And ultimately they maintain that
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to be God, the God of classical theism specifically. Right. But God is as Aquinas would, would talk about
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it. He has this kind of like very philosophical, somewhat spooky, but I think ultimately correct view
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of God, that God just is subsistence existence or pure being and pure goodness itself. That when we
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acquire certain virtues and we move along in the spiritual life, we're actually participating
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in God. We're, we're sort of increasing ourselves along these, these relevant dimensions where we
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become more perfect and we participate in the good. He's got this sort of neoplatonic aspect in his
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otherwise Aristotelian philosophy. And of course, this is ultimately meant to orient us,
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orient our will to our supernatural end, which is the beatific vision. So traditional Christianity
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is, is Aristotelianism plus is the way I like to talk about. So, so you can just, the faith can
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take everything that we already said about Aristotle and then integrate it into a larger perspective
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where our ultimate good is fundamentally relational. It's relating to our creator in a particular way,
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but to have that right sort of relation, you need faith. It is a theological virtue that makes
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that possible. And also eventually you need to have perfection and moral perfection. So it integrates
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or links up in a much higher, I think more extravagant, I think ultimately more beautiful
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way too, but it's certainly not contrary in any sense, if that makes sense.
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So, okay. It sounds like where Aristotelianism says, you know, be fit, be healthy to achieve
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human flourishing or excellence. Your faith says to take that, you know, to keep that, but then also
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point it to the divine, which is, you know, the, that, that big metaphysical perspective.
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But do we see faith and fitness on a more day-to-day basis, like in the gym?
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Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, just speaking personally, Brett, I mean, when I converted,
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when I became Christian, I totally changed my intentions of what am I working out for?
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I mean, look, I think I had all the wrong sorts of intentions starting out. I mean, originally my
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fitness motivation was very negative. I just wanted to get away from being teased and made fun of,
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but then it became like, once I started getting results, I thought I started looking good. It
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became very narcissistic, right? It kind of became obsessive, ego comparative. So I don't think I was
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doing it for particularly good reasons. A lot of the actions could stay the same. So this relates to
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what we were talking about before, but the reasons I were, I am, am doing those actions. Those started
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to fundamentally change. So I started thinking about, okay, well, how can fitness be used to
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strengthen the relationships I have with other people, to help other people, to be an inspiration to my
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kids, to make sure that I'm around for my kids, that I can teach them the virtues, that I can help
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them practice the faith in certain unique and important ways. So I'm not sure if this is totally
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answering your question, but the answer is it changed everything, right? At least for me, it
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completely reoriented, not all the things I do. I still did a lot of the same things, but the reasons
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for which I did them. Something I've seen, you know, if you use like Paul's definition of faith
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in the Hebrews, right? It's like a substance of things hoped for, but not seen.
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Not seen yet. Right. I think kind of playing it back to fitness, starting a fitness journey
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requires some faith, right? You might cognitively know like, oh, if I do these things, I will get
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in shape. But for a lot of people, they don't believe it. I've seen people when they first
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start their fitness journey, they're just like, I don't, I don't think this is going to work.
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Like I'm doing the thing and it's not working the way I wanted. But for the people that it
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ends up working for, they have to like, kind of have faith. They have to have faith in the
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process. Like faith is trust, right? They have to trust their coach. Like if you just keep doing
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the stuff, it'll work out. Then you kind of have to use faith as sort of an animating force in your
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action until you see the fruits of it. And then you, you just know.
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And then you don't need faith anymore, right? That's the idea in heaven. Like that virtue drops
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away because you don't need it. That's a great example, Brett. I think it's totally true is that
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faith at the end of the day is an act of the will, right? Like you're not going to have this
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certainty in many areas of life, but what do you have? Well, you have the grounds for reasonable
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affirmation, oftentimes just testimony, but look, we have to take a lot of testimony on faith as
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and reasonably affirm it all the time. There's so many things that we know where we're thinking
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only because other people have told us, right? And presumably reliable people. So you mentioned
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the coach. That's right. You might not believe it in a sense that you have complete certainty that
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this is going to turn out the way that you want, but you make a particular act of the will to commit
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yourself to this way of living and you commit yourself to the process. And then over time,
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eventually, right, hopefully you don't even need that faith anymore because you've seen the fruits.
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You've been through it. Yeah. Okay. So let's get into kettlebells specifically. In your new book,
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Strong On, you make the case for how kettlebells can help you get strong, get lean, can even help you
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increase mobility all in just 20 minutes a day. So that's some great copy there. But I think it's
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true though, because you've, you yourself, you've seen the fruits bear out in your own physique.
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And something you've talked about for a long time is that you argue for being a fitness generalist
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over a fitness specialist. And when you're a fitness generalist, you're not trying to be the
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strongest in the world. You're not trying to have a professional bodybuilder physique. You just want
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to be physically skilled in a variety of areas. So you're, you're lean, you're mobile, you're strong,
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you're flexible. So you're, you're, you're prioritizing general all around health. So why
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are you such a big advocate for kettlebells and how do kettlebells fit into your generalist
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fitness philosophy? Yeah, I think the kettlebell is something like the Swiss army knife of functional
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fitness. And again, trying to set the right expectations. It's not the best tool for every
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particular job, but it's good to great at pretty much all the jobs, right? Like if you want to
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build strength, awesome. Kettlebells can do that. You want to put on muscle? Great. No problem. You
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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
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a killer app for that. They're definitely one of the best tools for that. So it's really the sort of
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family man's or family woman's solution. I sometimes call them the, the, the minimalist ultimate
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secret fitness weapon. So for the generalist, I think they're an easy and obvious choice,
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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
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bit time crunched. Can't spend hours in the, a day in the gym like you could back in college.
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I think they're worth giving a solid look at for sure. And what's nice too, they're affordable.
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They don't take up much space. Another nice benefit, they're portable. You could take them
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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?
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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
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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.
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Throw in some jump rope and running. You can fill that gap pretty easy. So like anything else,
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you know, they're not absolutely perfect. I don't think the kettlebell is the end all be
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all. I just think they're, they're really darn good. Right. Especially if you're into this whole
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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,
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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
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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?
00:21:48.880
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
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
00:24:33.460
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
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
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
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.
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
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
00:40:56.900
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
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
00:50:10.060
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00:50:17.380
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00:50:21.020
support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind time to listen to the AWIM podcast, but put what