Pavel Tsatsouline Kettlebell Strength Training Weight Lifting Workouts Exercise and Flexibility Questions & Answers.

Check out the HOC programs on my site to get going. A guy at my seminar stated that he lost 30lbs on the program. That is not an uncommon result. Regardless without proper nutrition your results will be super slow. Get both in check and you are all set. Mike Mahler

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They should have some info on cordyceps. I have taken it in the past and found it effective for pre-workout energy and as an adaptagen during periods of stress. Check out bodybuilding.com as they should have some info on it. Mike Mahler

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I don't know what your training goals are but going from 2 24lb bells to an 88lb bell is a big jump. The Taming the 88lb bell article that I wrote is for people that can handle the 70lb bell for some drills. I would recommend that you get a 70lb bell first. Mike Mahler

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Safeman, Your post is going to invite flaming due to the way you presented it. Pavel explains clearly why the 5x5x5 program works in his book and I don't know what you expect him to tell you. A better way to phrase your post would have been to ask forum members for feedback on the 5x5x5 program rather than an explanation of why it works. That is already in the BB book. Regardless, give the program a shot and I think that you will be a believer after a few weeks. Good luck Mike Mahler

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Pavel already explains why the program works in the BB. If you do not believe it works then don't bother. It works by spreading the volume thoughout the week instead of compressing it into 1-2 days per week. More practice equals more strength. Mike Mahler

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Some people will find that Monday and thursday works while people that have better recovery abilities or less stress in their lives will find that 3x a week works well. Mike Mahler

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Jason, I believe that you were referring to increaasing the speed on the bands as you cannot lockout too quickly with the bands and risk injury. Correct me if I wrong. I was referring to increasing speed on weight exercises such as presses. The forced acceleration from the bands teaches you how to move weights faster while staying as tense as possible. The more time you have under tension on an exercise such as presses the less likely you are to compete the rep or reps. Learning how to explode from the beginning of the rep and keep the speed on all the way to the end will increase the success rate. Assuming that once has the neccessary tension as well. I don't think that a trainee has to worry about pressing a heavy weight too fast which would be damaging to the joints and one of the reasons why we naturally slow the weight down the closer we get to lockout. This could be a problem with lighter weights if the trainee has speed without the necessary control. With heavy weights the intent should be to press the weights quickly to get through the sticking point. Even if the intent is to move the heavy weight fast, the weight will likely move so fast that injuries occur. Hope this answers your question. Thanks Mike

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I have not done much work with attaching bands to kettlebells for presses. However, I have been doing lots of presses with Lifeline's TNT cable and had a similar experience to yours. What you are learning is forced acceleration with the bands and developing one gear strength. The bands teach you how to maintain the tension and speed during the entire duration of each rep. This transfers well to weights as you noticed. Mike Mahler

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Do the heavy bag round and snatches back to back and then take a break. In the beginning, you might want to take a 30 second break in between the round and snatch set to catch your wind, but work on compressing it. Mike Mahler

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One option is to wear gloves that you can take on and off easily or just wear what you want and whatever time it takes to take the gloves off is just a needed break. Or try doing swings instead of snatches. Mike Mahler

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For example do 1x20 on one-arm swings or one-arm snatches to end each session. Or just add 2 15 minute high intesnity cardio sessions per week to your routine. Do them right after two of the 5x5x5 sessions. Mike Mahler

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Pavel is talking about strength training, HOC is high intesnity cardio so of course you are going to be beat after a session.. Just start with 15 minute HOC workouts and work up to 30 minutes if your goal is fat loss over all others. Mike Mahler

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If you are only going to train two times per week, I would pick high volume programs that require you take take several days off between each session. One example is the 10x5 program (German Volume training modified) or EDT. Do upper Body on Monday, and lower body on Thursday. Or take Jack's advice and do two full body sessions per week.

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I have seen training footage of him running in the snow with a log over one shoulder. I read in an interview that he bought a full sized fridge place it on his back and carried it up several flights of stairs. Amazing! Watching his wrestling matches was really excited as he would crush his opponenets. Jeff Blatnik fough him once and stated that he could not belive that Karelin could pick him up to slam him until it happened. Blatnik weighed in at 275 or so at the time. Mike Mahler  

Take long pauses at the bottom (four seconds) and lean into the bars to hit the chest more. I recommend that you get a weight belt to add resistance to really mazimize the benefits of dips. Mike Mahler

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Robert, Fat loss is more diet than training. You can get lean on a strength and size program by modifying diet. In addition, keep 2 active recovery workouts in your training week for some extra fat burning. Work up a good sweat without killing yourself HOC style. 20-30 minutes will do. Circuit training with a light kettlebell is one option. Mike Mahler

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Also, the two goals are not mutually exclusive, but you want a focus. Still, do some strength and size sessions with a few active recovery sessions per week to keep the fat loss going. Mike Mahler

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If you really want to add some resistance to your walking in an effective manner, get a weight vest and wear that when you do some of the walks(not all of them). A good brand, is www.thexvest.com Mike Mahler

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With the side press, you actively press the weight as you lean to the side. With the bent press, you contract your lat as hard as you can, hold the weight in one position, and lean away from the bell. Extend your forearm as you fall away. There is no active press with the bent press. Think of it as a bent hold. Mike Mahler

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First, congrats on the weight loss. Great work. Regarding shifting your program to more of a strength training regimen, keep it simple. Start off with 2 strength sessions per week and two fat loss/muscular endurance sessions. A 5x5 protocol 2x a week using a full body routine will work well. Example: A-1: Bench Press A-2: Bent Over Row Do a-1 and a-2 back to back. A-1, wait two minutes, a-2, wait two minutes etc until you have completed all five sets. take a two minute break and then do: Deadlift 5x5 93 minute breaks in between each set) After a month of 5x5, try GTG for the bench press and cut all other pressing out of your routine. Mike Mahler

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because you take it more seriously. In fact I would venture to say that most training injuries happen with lighter weights than heavier. With lighter weights, you can compromise form, have your mind on other things etc. This can open one up to a bad rep with a nice injury. With heavier weights, you have to get locked in or it will go no where. Mike Mahler

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Thanks for your business and glad that you like the DVD. Regarding the TGU, really study the pattern of motion that I cover on the DVD. Once you get that down, you will me amazed at how much easier the TGU becomes. Mike Mahler

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Some people will prefer a wider stance, but most people will find that a wide stance places additional stress on the lower back. Shoulder width works well for many and some prefer a closer stance or even feet together. Experiment with a few stances and see which one fits you best. Mike Mahler

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should not complain about not passing the test if they are not willing to do some homework. Also, the more prepared people come to the RKC, the more we can cover making the cert better and better. Mike Mahler

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Coconut Oil There has been a lot of hype recently about coconut oil and I have been receiving a lot of questions on the hotline about our thoughts on coconut oil. Coconut oil was used extensively in prepackaged foods along with palm oil. Both were used heavily in margarines. They were cheap and in plentiful supply. Then as the medical community and scientists discovered that saturated fats were bad for our health, they have slowly been replaced with more healthy oils in food preparation. The coconut industry suddenly found itself with a surplus of oil that nobody wanted. Marketing firms and scientists were hired to find good things to say about coconut oil to increase sales. If you type in coconut oil in your search engine it will bring up a lot of sites with good things to say about coconut oil. I encourage you to read the articles and then check out the references that follow the articles. You will find the references are in short supply, have not been published in top research journals and are most often written or sponsored by the coconut industry. I then invite you to go to the National Library of Medicine’s site (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). Again search “coconut oil”. I did. There is not one published paper showing any benefits for consuming coconut oil, except if you are on parenteral nutrition (feeding tube) and you need the extra calories because of your disease. Most of us are not short of calories. The use of coconut oil in these cases is always short-term. Here is some basic information on fats. The Two Essential Fats The human body is brilliant at making fat. As dieters know only too bitterly, it can make a barrel of bodyfat out of any food you eat — carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. It can even turn hormones like insulin into fat.2 It’s a fat-manufacturing plant par excellence! But there are two fats your body cannot make, linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3).3 As the US National Academy of Sciences states in its handbook of Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), you must obtain these essential fats from your food.3, 4 Almost all your omega-6 fats come from vegetable oils. So do your omega-3 fats, except for the omega-3s in fish oils. Meats and dairy foods contain only miniscule amounts of essential fats. Living omega-6 and omega-3 fats are essential for oxygen uptake, regulation of blood pressure, formation of hemoglobin and insulin metabolism. Paradoxically, they are also essential for maintaining a low level of bodyfat. Even more important, they are the raw materials you need to make all the special fats in the structure of your brain, eyes, ears, testes, ovaries, adrenals, and in the membranes that surround and protect every cell in your body. Without these two essential fats in your diet, you gradually become a decaying blob of flesh, progressively losing the ability to think, see, hear, reproduce, or even move a muscle.3,4 Whenever your dietary supply of essential fats becomes inadequate, your body starts to degenerate towards that blob. Fats Store the Life Force To know whether you are getting the right fats, you have to be able to distinguish the living from the dead. To do so, you have to know a little about the life force that animates all living things. Every second of life, your body has to burn fuel in the mitochondria, the “furnaces” of your cells, to release energy. The moment this process stops, energy disappears and you die. The energy is the life force. When you burn carbohydrates or proteins as fuel, oversimplified college textbooks will tell you that they release about four calories of energy per gram. When you burn fats, they release more than twice as much energy, about nine calories per gram. Fats are your most concentrated source of the life force. Calories, however, are just a measure of the heat produced when you burn foods in an instrument called a bomb calorimeter. This crude device makes no distinction between one fat and another. “Burning calories” in your body, is just a schoolboy description for an incredibly complex process of electron exchange between food and your flesh, a process that differs radically for every different form of fat. What Are Living Fats? What we are really talking about starts to become clear when you ask, where does all our energy come from? It comes from the sun. To dip into a smidgeon of physics, courtesy of my late mentor, Nobel Laureate, Dick Feynman, every particle of stored energy in foods is the end result of plant growth. The electromagnetic field of the electrons in the unsaturated fats of living plants attracts and captures photons, particles of sunlight. By combining these particles with carbon dioxide from the air, plus the gas nitrogen and a miniscule amount of minerals extracted from the soil, plants build their structure. All plants are containers for the life force. The foods you eat, including meat and dairy foods, which grow from the plants the animals ate, are all storehouses for the life force from sunlight. The two essential fats, linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid are the most concentrated and the most biologically active form of storage. If, and only if, these fats are alive and well, as they are in fresh, unprocessed, organically-grown vegetable oils, then electron exchange can occur freely to transfer the stored life force to your flesh. This specific transfer of light energy from essential fats enables you to build and maintain your brain, your eyes, many parts of your organs, and the membranes that surround and protect every cell in your body. It also releases the life force, as raw energy, which enables you to think, feel, move and continue to live. If your body fails to maintain that flow of energy, you die in about eight seconds. So you can see that anything which interferes with energy transfer from food to your flesh is detrimental to life. Essential fats are easily killed. They are as biologically active as the living plant they come from. They interact with everything. So, if you separate them from the living plant system, and expose them to light, heat or air, they quickly go rancid. In attempting to prevent rancidity, and to “improve” color, taste, smell, and shelf life mass production of vegetable cooking oils and margarines destroys their essential biological activity.5 Even free-range livestock, who eat the essential fats from living plants, convert what they do not use into dead saturated fats which we then eat. Your body cannot exchange electrons freely with these dead fats, so access to the life force is inhibited, and life and health inevitably decline.5 We Are Deficient In Essential Fats Even the conservative RDA handbook recommends a daily intake of about six grams of linoleic acid and two grams of alpha-linolenic acid. That makes your requirement for essential fats larger than for any of the vitamins or minerals.4 These RDA recommendations came out in 1989. Since then, new evidence recommends an even larger daily requirement. Very few of us get it. My book, The New Nutrition, documents the progressive degradation and over-processing of our food, which, among other sins, has destroyed most of the living fats that used to be part of our diet.1,5 Various researchers estimate that up to 80% of all Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders are now suffering from deficiencies of essential fats.6,7 Say No to Saturated Fats There is a major difference between essential fats and all other fats. Let’s think of these fatty acid chains as buses. Saturated fats have no empty seats on the bus. Essential fats and other unsaturated fats have a number of empty seats on their buses. These empty seats allow these fats to move substances around your body. For example, essential fats transfer oxygen from the alveoli of the lungs to the hemoglobin of the red blood cells. Then when the hemoglobin passes by a cell that needs the oxygen, the essential fat that is part of the cell membrane structure, takes the oxygen out of the hemoglobin and puts it into the cell. Only essential fatty acids can do this. Unlike saturated fats, essential fats are not stored as bodyfat and do not increase bodyfat. Saturated fats also have no repelling electromagnetic charges, so the sticky molecules of saturated fats group together readily in parallel lines like matchsticks, to form compact clots. They are solid or semi-solid at room temperature. It takes the heat of a cookstove to agitate the molecules sufficiently, so they bounce off each other and create spaces between them. With the same number of molecules taking up more space, the solid clot cannot hold together, and lard melts into liquid. At 98.6°F (37°C), your body temperature isn’t high enough to keep saturated fats liquid. Palmitic acid, for example, the main saturated fat in butter and beef, remains solid until it reaches 145°F (63°C). So in your arteries, it sticks to everything. One result is that your blood platelets become sticky and easily form into clots. Another result is the build-up of damaging lumps of fat throughout your organs. Unless burned immediately for fuel, saturated fat forms deposits in your body like clinker or gunk in a furnace, infiltrating your heart, liver and brain.1 This accumulation of clinker or gunk is silent and without symptoms, until it emerges as full-blown disease. For more than one-third of its victims, the first and only symptom they experience is a fatal heart attack.8 Saturated fat diseases were rare in ancient times when meat and dairy foods formed only a small part of the usual diet. In Western countries today, they are a man-made plague, created by the greed of meat and dairy industries, and the ignorance and corruption of our medical authorities. For nearly a century, manufacturers and regulators alike have used the most sophisticated promotional gambits to foist excess saturated fat on human systems never designed to cope with it. So now we know why we don’t want to eat saturated fats, lets look at the percentages of the different kinds of fats in some vegetable oils9: Flaxseed oil: 14% omega-6; 54% omega-3; 23% mono-unsaturated; 9% saturated. Soybean oil: 44% omega-6; 11% omega-3; 30% mono-unsaturated; 15% saturated. Olive oil: 12% omega-6; 0% omega-3; 72% mono-unsaturated; 16% saturated. Palm oil: 9% omega-6; 0% omega-3; 44% mono-unsaturated; 48% saturated. Coconut oil: 4% omega-6; 0% omega-3; 8% mono-unsaturated; 88% saturated. Leave the coconut oil on the shelf and let the growers find another use for their oil that does not involve destroying your health. It does seem to make a good ingredient for hair shampoo, a use that will not damage your health. Our small island here in British Columbia now has a truck fueled by vegetable oil belonging to the local recycler. He is using recycled oil from deep fryers, but coconut oil would work just as well. We suggest the coconut growers look at this as a nice way for them to make money, save the environment and save your health, all at the same time. References: 1. Colgan M. The New Nutrition: Medicine For The Millennium. Vancouver: Apple Publishing, 1994. 2. Colgan M. Your Personal Vitamin Profile. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1982. 3. Horrobin DF. Essential fatty acids: a review. In Horrobin DF, (ed). Clinical Use of Essential Fatty Acids. London: Eden Press, 1982. 4. Recommended Dietary Allowances, 10th Edition. Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1989. 5. Kabara J. Pharmacological Effects of Lipids, Volume I,II,III. Champaign, IL: AOCS, 1978,1985,1989. 6. Murray MT, Beutler J. Understanding Fats and Oils. Encinitas, CA: Progressive Health Productions, 1996. 7. Galli C, Simopoulos AP. Dietary Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids. New York: Plenum Press, 1988. 8. Kuller L, et al. Circulation, 1966;34:1056. 9. Colgan M. Essential Fats For Athletes. Vancouver, BC: Apple Publsihing, 1998.  

As you are probably aware, I do not eat meat and thus need a source of saturated fat. Some saturated fat is necessary for optimal health, so I use coconut oil for that. I am not sold on coconut oil not being beneficial, but do not think that it is a miracle product either. Mike Mahler

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I alternate between coconut oil and coconut milk. However, as Pitchforkmanic stated, I follow a vegan diet and thus would not have any saturated fat if I did not take coconut oil/milk. If you already eat meat you do not need to do so. Mike Mahler

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I spend around $75.00 or so per week on groceries. You can be more frugal than me if you are not particular about organic food. Personally, I prefer to put my health first. Mike Mahler

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And do not worry, the soreness will wear off in a month or two ;-) just kidding. If you can, get a good sports massage this week. It will work wonders. Thanks again for attending the seminar and I am glad that you enjoyed it. Mike Mahler

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pound for pound one of the strongest people that I have seen train with kettlebells. People, Kelly weights around 115 and can do TGU's with the 53lb bell, double clean and press 2 53s, press a 62lb bell etc. Amazing! Thanks for driving all the way down from Wisconsin. Great to meet you and your mother. Mike Mahler

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It was an honor to have you at the seminar and everyone was impressed with your abilities. I hope you plan on teaching in the near future as people will benefit tremendously. Mike Mahler

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Go to the archive button on this page. Read carefully and you will see that it states that you can see each article for free.

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and I agree. Many people get caught up in luxury problems, but we do not have to look far to realize that their are plenty of people in this world that have real problems that deal with them better than most people with luxury problems. Thanks for posting Mike Mahler

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Lisa did a bang up job. Very comprehensive manual, excellent photos, instruction, and tons of programs. Most have for all women who train with kettlebells and also a great manual for anyone that wants to maximize the benefits of KB training. Great job Lisa! Mike Mahler

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Great site Steve! Very professional, easy to navigate. represents you very well. The only things that will make it better are some more articles, a newsletter with newsletter archives and Maybe a training tip of the week etc as well. Great work! Mike Mahler

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It takes years of super hard work to ever get close. Also, I think that more people have limits that they impose upon themselves that occur long before genetic limits kick in.

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In other words, pick 6-8 exercises and do one set of each back to back. take one minute breaks in between each set (or longer) and go through the entire circuit 3-4 times. I would pick one ballistic move such as the alternating snatch (awesome drill by the way) with one press (I forget the name but the coassack press? that Steve does) some of the core stuff, lateral drills etc. Just one Idea that I think would work well for overall strength and conditioning. Mike Mahler

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Just a few miles south of Santa Moncia. I have a workshop coming up in June and I am available for private sessions. Email me at mahler25@yahoo.com for more info. Here is some info on the Crossover snatch: Using the right arm as an example for instruction, place a kettlebell on the outside of your left foot. Reach across with your right hand and grab the kettlebell handle. Snatch it across your body and overhead in the opposite direction. Lower the bell to your shoulder and then take it back to the starting position. Switch arms with each set. Keep the range between 3-5. This is not the ideal exercise for high repetitions.

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