Kettlebells….. “the blue collar athlete’s tool for strength and power”

Article by: Jason Spector

Have you ever shoveled 40 yards of top soil and spread it with a wheel barrel, or built a 100 ft. stone wall, or even stacked bails of hay in a 100+ degree hay loft?  I have!  I was also a state finalist in High School and a Division III All American twice, placing 3^rd both times.  The manual labor I was fortunate to have experienced during my high school and college summers served as great core training and grappling specific movements that taxed my physical strength endurance as well as mental strength endurance.   I think there are different types of strong, I call my type or my favorite type - blue collar strong. 

Just recently I found a long lost love in my life.  They are called kettlebells.  I thought I was strong before, now I realize I was missing something.  Kettlebells can serve as a great year round training tool.  They can be used for pre-season, in-season, or off-season strength and conditioning.  Going back to the “blue collar strong”, have you ever shook hands with a stone mason or a dairy farmer.  Bone crushing grip strength!  Unless you have a place to put a cow in your wrestling room or a stack of blocks, I believe kettlebells are the answer.

Last season I purchased $1500 worth of kettlebells for my wrestling team.  While the competition was buying uniforms or new headgear, we bought iron cannon balls with fat iron handles on top.  There are so many benefits to be gained from utilizing kettlebells, I don’t know where to begin.  I guess I will stick with performance based experience in regards to wrestling applications.  Kettlebells are perfect for repetitive powerful movements and movements that incorporate multiple muscle groups.  If you are reading GrapplerStrength articles, you are probably familiar with a power clean, snatch, and squat.  These are all movements that can be performed with kettlebells, in a more sport specific core strengthening routine.  Not to mention you can perform endless traditional dumbbell and barbell type exercises with them as well as create hundreds of your own. 

Explosion and technique:  Power cleaning one or two kettlebells is a sure way to soak through your shirt.  It will also force you to focus on technique and form during the movement.  It is a wrist rolling action at the top of the clean.  (Similar to digging in an under hook).  One arm or both arms over a period of maximum intensity and duration make for a strong minded and more focused power athlete. 

Then when you add the snatch and the swing into a routine, you might as well attach a warning sign to your wrestler that says “danger: known to throw at high altitudes”.   One reason is that the power and mechanics required to perform the swing, snatch, and clean, identically match the movement used to pick up or throw and opponent.   To get more detailed, it is the compact starting point combined with the following quad and glute contraction up into the hips and lower back extension and a upper back flexion that is all tied to a skillful stabilizing arm and upper body movement depending on the exercise being performed.  Not to mention the repetitive return phase that is a core, lower back, upper body,  shoulder, chest and back contraction, and hamstring squeeze to regain momentum in the other direction.  Awe man…. I feel like taking someone down through a wall right when I talk about this stuff!  

Core benefits:  I hate saying the word core because it is used so often but it can be a wrestler’s single biggest weakness or more importantly it can become their single biggest strength.  Anytime you can activate your core while training, the better your positioning during the match, fight, game.   Kettlebell training strengthens a wrestler’s stance or core tremendously.  The large variety of sport specific exercises are brain rattling when trying to come up with just a few since most of the movements incorporate the core.  The windmill, renegade, and “get up” are just a few.  Of course those are fancy names that mean nothing.  Put one kettlebell over you head (one arm) look up at it the whole time, with straight legs bend and rotate so that your free hand picks up another kettlebell between your feet, then bicep curl it or just come back to straight standing up - that is a windmill.

Functionality in season:  Kettlebells are extremely functional and user friendly in a wrestling practice setting.  We bring them right on the mats and do two or three man rotations.  We can set them down right on the mats because there are no jagged edges to rip mats with and even the 50 lbers won’t damage the mat.  Dumbbells and barbells don’t provide the same opportunities to strength train within a normal practice environment.  Another supporting point as to why kettlebells are the answer for strength training grapplers.

Tools for the Job:   Oh yeah, I asked a very good strength and conditioning coach about kettlebells vs. dumbbells.  He felt that you could do the same things with dumbbells which are considerably less expensive.  I disagree and here’s why!   The next time you are in Lowes or Home Depot, go to the tools section and ask a sales person (if you can find one!);  tell him you need a hammer that can nail in screws.  The right tool makes all the difference in the world.  Just the way you hold a kettlebell and the way gravity pulls it makes it crazy different than a dumbbell and feels even heavier than an equally weighted dumbbell. 

Safety:  Live to fight another day.  Perhaps the most important part and most appropriate for being last on the list, so it stays fresh in your mind.  Any multiple muscle group or joint movements, stabilization exercises, Olympic lifts, or the repetitive swinging actions can be equally damaging for an athlete.  A common mistake is to attempt to increase weight at the same pace you might with a traditional lifting exercise (i.e., bench press).  It is important to progress very slowly with kettlebells.  Form is so important for safety as well as the carry over to athletic execution of technique. 

One fact that puts this in perspective is to be certified through one of the most prestigious kettlebell training associations in the world, my friend was required to perform 75 one arm over head snatches with a 52lb kettlebell consecutively!  That is how technically proficient they have to be; it is an extremely work efficient and powerful human that can do that.    Max reps with lighter weights or “safe reps”,  a number you know you can perform with perfect form safely are better for beginners.  Increase the set frequency for increased intensity or superset with calisthenics movements such as squat thrusts or push ups etc.  Another strategy I employ for safety is to only allow for one arm exercises until the athlete achieves proficiency in his movements.

Work Out Ideas:  For in-season kettlebell training I attempt to increase strength for the first 2 ½ months, this is obviously good for getting in shape and preventing injury.  I like 3-4 sets of a variety of exercises with only 6-8 reps per side.  Keep in mind if I am doing a one armed movement I am doing it only 6 times with one arm and then 6  with the other arm.  That is 12 reps and one set.  I also have them do 3 to 4 exercises in a row to make it wrestling specific (no rests), even though we are going moderately heavy (6 safe reps).  I also add calisthenics in for an active recovery period.  If you do the math, 4 exercises times 12 reps is 48 reps plus calisthenics.  That is a minute or more of what I call errrumpft work, the same sound you make when hitting a stand up, granby, double, or mat return, basically  to initiate any offensive move in wrestling.  Now you feel like you wrestled a match and what is that on your brow….  beads of sweat.  4 more turns or sets of that routine and you will have just shoveled  4 yards of top soil, stacked 4 dozen rocks, and milked 4 dozen cows in less than 15 minutes.  That is blue collar strong!

Testimonial:

Dear Kettlebells,

     Thanks for all the new muscles you have given me, I am doing things with my body I have never done before.  I have great core strength that allows me to maintain my wrestling stance over the entire duration of a match.  Now I have muscles in my forearms that allow me to crush things with my hands.  My legs and my arms now work as one powerful weapon when I apply wrestling techniques to my opponents.  Most importantly I am doing things to my opponent’s bodies I have never done before and they don’t like it.  Just wanted to say thanks for all you have given me.                                    

                                                            Yours in Wrestling

                                                            Former Weakling, Average Joe 

Jason Spector is the varsity wrestling coach for South Glens Falls (NY) High School.  In just four seasons of coaching, Jason has transformed the program from only five varsity members to a 22-7 record last season with one state qualifier finishing fourth in the NYS large-school division.  Several of Jason’s former wrestlers are competing successfully on the collegiate level.  Jason was a 1992 New York State Finalist and went on to excel at SUNY-Brockport where he was a 2-time Division III All-American, finishing 3^rd at the NCAA Division III National Championships in 1995 and 1997. Upon graduation from Brockport, Jason earned his Masters of Sport Coaching from the United States Sports Academy in 2005.  He holds a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and is currently 6-1 in North American Grappling Submission Competition.  Jason is the Journeymen North head coach.  He can be contacted at Spectorj@sgfallssd.org.