The Knife of Permanence: Kettlebell
Who do you want on your side when things go down?
On the first page of Pavel’s Simple and Sinister, an anecdote that has always made me stop when I read it has been the following:
“If a kettlebell were a person, it would be the type of a guy you would want [on your side] in an alley fight” (5).
The quote, attributed to powerlifter and Elite FTS author and educator Glenn Buechlein, has always brought me back to my first time engaging with a kettlebell, this being at the Instituto Reação in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2017. A couple days into training twice daily saw my body and mind blurred, my white kimono now greyed, and an hour of time to kill before training became just time to lay and look at the ceiling. This was until people that I trained alongside for each session began using kettlebells before the training session began.
This informed me of two things. One–this could not be difficult work, considering that it is happening before some of the most difficult training I had been through in my life. Two–it was probably the only work that could be done considering this was matside and there was not space for traditional strength training equipment. I would be very wrong about both, and would find out the hard way as a result of leaning completely on my Blue Belt, 300 Pound back squat and 400 pound deadlift–which, if you didn’t know, might be the formula for one of the most arrogant young humans you could probably run into.
The two men working were mainstays at the Favela’s training center, and both weighed roughly 140ish pounds each. Knowing enough Portuguese to grant myself permission to enter their training session, I quickly found myself on the losing end of a skill curve as they began with kettlebell swings. Just as with the training sessions at the Instituto Reacao, there was a sink or swim element that resulted in me overloading my quads and rattling myself through two handed swing reps using a 53 pound kettlebell that, comparatively, looked like someone reacting to being shot versus their graceful, nearly dancing with what appeared to be a weightless kettlebell when it was being commanded through space in their hands. The training segments were divided using time as volume, not reps, and my horror set in as they began handfighting in between sets of swings.
Video of the Complex with Intermittent Handfight
After fifteen minutes of this, they knocked the bell down to 44 pounds, and began doing Turkish Get-Ups. One of the most humiliating moments in my life was being so sure I was going to be able to do this well predicated on my absolute strength and general proficiency regarding strength movements, and nearly destroying my head due to my hilariously low skill regarding moving dynamically under load. Both men barely acknowledged my extreme failure, probably as a result of being used to this happening, and only made matters worse through obliterating what was left of my physical soul in the three hour training session that followed. My Jiu-Jitsu was less of a concern as I knew that it needed a lot of work, what needed to be fixed immediately was my lack of strength and stability moving under such a light weight.
Upon returning to the United States, I was able to find a 106lb Kettlebell on Craigslist Backpages, and Lily bought me a pair of 18 pound kettlebells–both of which would be used for nothing more than deadlifts and bulgarian split squats for the next two years to complement jiu-jitsu training and barbell work. The shift that occurred after two years was a video I came across on the Sherdog MMA forum, of Strongfirst Team Leader doing hardstyle swings, cleans, presses, snatches, presses, and get-ups in what looked to be a shipping container. It was the hardest thing I had ever seen up to that point in strength training–the way he breathed, the way he moved, it looked like the two black belts in Brazil. There was a level of grace amalgamated with violence and timing that looked (and is) the result of years of skill work. I knew I needed to establish a clear and strong beginning point and respect work like this too much to try to imitate it off youtube, so I asked around on the Sherdog forums and found myself walking through the doors of a Fairfield gym on a Monday night in March of 2020, minutes after a country-wide lockdown was announced.
Ron Farrington, Strongfirst Team Leader, Law Enforcement professional, and MMA fighter sat on a couch with a massive dog and let me know that we would be moving the session out of visibility due to the restrictions that were immediately put into place, and the next four hours saw me under the scrutiny of his masterful skill and the weight of the male standard 53 pound kettlebell. He observed my deadlift, squat, overhead press on the barbell, and reverse engineered all of the manners and habits in which I employed to move weight to the kettlebell in a way that I have not encountered until I met and worked with Pavel Tsatsouline in the Fall of 2021. His inventory had the depth and breadth of a mythical-master instructor, and his understanding of preparing the body for violence through a rock-solid understanding of mechanics and what combat demands from you is an impression that is left on me to this day. In many ways, every time I teach, it is a tribute to Ron and what he gave me that day. I left knowing what I wanted with my life, got right to work and patiently waited for the announcement of the SFG whenever the world–and our country–allowed it.
The next 5 years would be spent watching the shift from barbells, plates, and trap bars to kettlebell pairs from 14 pounds to 150 pound pairs and one lone 200 pound monster kettlebell.
When my son was born, my training shifting to one hundred percent kettlebell work saw some incredible, and well documented, progress that saw no set-up time required and sessions moving from 2 hours to 45 minutes or less. Maximum effort on the bar became training sessions that felt like “fighting”, and seeing my body reap the direct benefit of the pressure put on me by the kettlebell tool in those years are most of the reason why you will see the majority of my work and the work of my athletes underscored by the kettlebell.
Even this is a very difficult thing to do, considering these years spent working with the kettlebell ran parallel with my training systems exploding as a result of the massive amount of information that was being taken in and applied–all of which were applied to the kettlebell. Still, I opt for the barbell when working with my high school football, wrestling, and MMA population as a priority, but that is not a tool to have much reason to believe will be universally accessible to everyone. A lot of the people I work with are MMA fighters that cannot afford another stop on the way home or another gym membership outside of the already packed schedule of the muay thai gym, grappling gym, and their jobs. They just have a corner, and one kettlebell. This is the most common situation to my MMA fighters, but I have track athletes, wrestlers, jiu-jitsu athletes, and even basketball players that are forced to train in that context.
The environment becomes radically important at that point–the use of chairs, edges of couches, parking lots, doors, stools–it is so much less about the tools and the base of principles from which the coach works. I was not capable of this 5 years and $30,000 ago, particularly not with just kettlebells. A world class level of education has you understand dosage, intensity, volume, and even with all of that, it means zero without being put in front of athletes that have competitive aspirations. Are you able to use your knowledge and leverage few materials to make someone’s dream come true? This all takes time, effort, and the right situations.
I am a very different person than I was 5 years ago, a very different coach, and a considerably different decision maker. Will I use the kettlebell with a lineman that has Division 1 aspirations as the major modality just because of the depth and breadth of knowledge I have with the tool? Absolutely not, because success at that position is predicated on absolute strength. Have I successfully crafted a Division 1 level lineman using kettlebells as the primary tool as a result of his inability to get to the gym he could use for free because the bus didn’t operate during school breaks and he was using a fake address to go to said school? Yes. How did you do that? World class programming and decision making that relied heavily on improving his performance qualities and athletic fidelity in places that lineman are not typically adept. Heavy kettlebell complexes, short rest periods, low volume, wicket runs, well dosed plyometrics (shouts out Matt McInnes Watson the evil genius behind Plus Plyos), and developing such a high level of fitness that plug-in that into high playing ability (properly built mental resilience is another innate strong point in my coaching so be careful here, and I will address this at some point) and some great things can happen.
This sits us properly to the line that sent me spiraling when I opened the book in 2019–
“If a kettlebell were a person, it would be the type of a guy you would want [on your side] in an alley fight” (5).
Yes. They will not build the most absolute strength, they will not make you the fastest, they will not grant you a transfer over to result in a 500 pound deadlift. But what you will do is live without excuses–it is there. You will weaponize your strength–you will see blistering levels of synergy working to continue fighting against that cannonball with a handle. The people preparing with less and that already visualize that dream will fight harder and they won’t need a bus to get there–the tool is always there.
All of my training has led very simply to give me the ability to do what I want and give my family the experiences that they deserve.
The human being writing this was a person that prioritized his family and didn’t want to leave the house for anything outside of jiu-jitsu and didn’t want barbells and plates taking up space in a small apartment for toys–the bells were there and the people that were my peers have majorly dissolved or failed in their quests to become social media “masters”. Not all of my athletes have wild success stories, but the mettle in which we attacked that field on 100 degree days with 8 kettlebells and heart have made GREAT MEN and I know this because they are great men who have helped their communities, families, and friends lately, and are men that are showing my young son how to be a great man.
The article on this work is here. Strong boys then, great men, great leaders now as a result of the time spent on those fields.
The kettlebell is synonymous with those Black Belts in the favela that I was lucky enough to train at in Brazil. You want the one down to die on their shield. The one ready to throw hands at the drop of a dime, the most accessible man in the fight, to serve everyone universally, to serve well. The one who will go out on his shield, regardless of the inability to access high end diets, jiu-jitsu training in beautifully expensive facilities with hand picked staff, everything prettied and processed. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of the worst beatings in my life from those men, and have also been in the same streets sharing meals and laughs with these men in my broken Portuguese–the ethos of what I do with Wildlife and the people that I hold the closest are those types of human beings. I hold a great deal of pride to identify and BE from those places. To have been from across the world.
A great moment using the brand new Wildlife fishing knife—the lock key broke off into the bike lock and I was already freezing and didn’t want to invite the possibility of bolt cutters. The combination of the flashlight on the end to guide the knife and get the broken key pieces out to make way for the spare couldn’t have been written better. I still would rather that not happen at all, but okay universe…
The kettlebell remains that blade in the strength world. Unfortunately for me, social media is a big part of how I hold the attention of many and profess my teaching and handle business, and it also provides me an insight into where the fitness industry is. The kettlebell as a tool is wildly popular, but what is funniest about it is the range it has–I have my eyes fixated on people at home like Ostyn (@mercydenied), Indian Ronin (@indianronin01), Edwin (@ruggedfitnesslifestyle), Emily (@the_emilylawrence), and Anthony (@anthonymanco__) who are the flag bearers of consistency, toughness, and tireless fighting in the name of strength who fight for their life as their eyes search around the room at the same walls they peruse in the waning hours of the calm moments of night before sleep comes. It takes a special person to do that, this near dual-identity of what home is identified with, and to lionize and earn your strength in the same place that you read quietly and watch TV builds radically complex individuals who die on that same previously mentioned shield. You also have people in the highest end gyms, Equinox hotel gyms, and even the gym in the Soja bathhouse using kettlebells as a conduit to a great workout. I know where I belong, and where my people are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what is happening all over the world in the ways that people can set one foot in front of the other in a serious trajectory towards their goals with the one tool so many radically different people can agree upon.
I will close this piece by issuing an agreement with the often-told comparison that the kettlebell is the “swiss army knife” of training tools, when regarding its versatility and efficacy.
Another added feature of the Wildlife Fishing knife that I forgot to mention—the flint attachment at the back. Just. Come on. I had no need for fire today but if I did—come onnnnnn.
One of my old jiu-jitsu coaches speaks on jiu-jitsu’s comparison to a knife, a statement that holds close fidelity to the kettlebell’s close partnership to the same knife that John Danaher describes in the following piece:
“A knife can be used to make a sandwich; a knife can be used to save somebody’s life—as you’re struggling to get out of a car, you can cut the seatbelt and escape—a knife can be used to serve justice, it can be used for murder. It can be used for the greatest things, the most mundane things, and the most terrible things. It’s morally neutral. It’s only as good as its owner. Jujitsu is exactly the same. Jujitsu doesn’t make you good, it doesn’t make you bad. It will just reinforce what you already are.
(John Danaher, The New Yorker, 2017).
Using the seatbelt cutter that sits opposite the window hammer attachment to cut the line as opposed to the blade, I am in love with this knife.
Not everyone looks at their kettlebells in reverence as I do–acknowledging that my marks of weakness in my sweat inundating the bell and bringing upon rust-inducing damage ironically mark my weakness and not the bells’ and that the work–and the bell for that matter–will outlive me so I must train in a manner that grants me permanence in this world. Some people just want to train to “look hot” (many people on their Wildlife intake forms, 2021-2024)--the kettlebell serves faithfully and universally.
Initium. Hoodie and knife out now (and probably sold out by the time you read this :))