Purposeful Primitive Online

By Pavel
© 2010 Power by Pavel, Inc.

This article was inspired by Marty’s insightful Rep Speed: Velocity Versus Grind piece and its title by Jordan Vezina, RKC Team Leader.

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. If lifters picked up this paradoxical cue from shooters, there would be lot more strength to go around.

Understanding a perfect ‘grind’ calls for a short lesson in Newtonian physics. F=ma, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. This formula has at least two implications for a lifter. First, to quote influential Russian coach Sergey Smolov, ”…more strength is needed to lift a heavy [weight] fast than to lift it slow and, accordingly, the slower is the… lift, the greater weight can be lifted.”¹ Say, F equals 4 units (forget Newtons for simplicity’s sake). You can arrive at F of 4 by different combinations of m and a: 2×2, 1×4, 4×1, etc. If the first number represents mass, it becomes apparent that you will lift the heaviest weight with lower acceleration: 4×1, not 1×4. (Theoretically, one would lift the most weight at a near zero acceleration—e.g. 4=400×0.01— but then we run into an endurance problem as one’s max force output drops off in seconds.)

The second lesson from the F=ma formula is that acceleration must remain positive until the completion of the lift. If you have been moving as fast as you could from the start of the lift, you will be forced to slow down at the sticking point because you are at you most disadvantageous leverage to exert maximum force. This deceleration will finish off your already low force output, compliments of Newton. The moral of the story: do not accelerate when it does not count, so you can when it does. According to Dr. Thomas McLaughlin, an expert max lift is characterized by relatively even, low acceleration.
You should teach yourself to lift in such a way that even the heaviest weight is slightly speeding up towards the lockout. Boris Sheyko, Marty Gallagher’s Russian counterpart, emphasizes that “The barbell must leave the platform unhurriedly but afterwards it should move with constant acceleration…” I would like to underline that he said “constant acceleration”, not “constant speed”.

Senior RKC Dan John has a few things to say on this subject. “My Coach, the late Ralph Maughan, taught us the key to throwing anything was “Constant Acceleration”. Anybody can start fast, but speeding up after starting fast gives little [explosion]. Starting by grinding your “off foot” and letting things build allows you to snap the implement at the right time. “It is difficult to teach this as the beginner wants to generate all the speed at the start and coast to the finish. And, by the way, the beginner is REWARDED at first with this method as the neophyte’s light weights can be jacked overhead. That is why many people love the first months of training, but success comes when frustration arises. After missing over and over with just enough to demand better technique, the athlete tends to give in, grind it up, snap it at the right moment and continues on the path. “That is why so many people like to “dabble” with the first fleeting success of lifting. Then, then try 5K runs or bike races or whatever. Greatness comes when you decide to be patient enough to take the time to lift/throw right.”

Dan has a brilliantly simple self-correcting method of teaching one to smoothly squeeze the barbell off the platform and “constantly” accelerate it: use a thick bar. If you jerk, your fingers will peel open. But if you think like an expert marksman, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”, you will make the lift. Consider using the double overhand grip and taking a pass on the chalk in your deadlift warmups to learn and reinforce this lesson.

Let us sum up.

A grind is a non-ballistic lift done with a low positive acceleration throughoutthe range of motion.

A grind is a professional mindset for lifting the most weight. A mindset that takes years to practice and perfect.

A grind is not jerky or panicked. It is not sluggish or artificially slow either.

A grind has composure. Like a space shuttle, it lifts off at its leisure and slowly picks up with the unhurried inevitability of an unstoppable force.
A grind displays the confidence of real strength.

38 percent of the participants at this RKC PRed on their Strict Press

In spite of fatigue, at the end of the second day of the RKC kettlebell instructor course at least one third of the students (38% at the course at which this photo was taken) set strict military press PRs. We teach them how to ‘grind’.
Photo courtesy www.DragonDoor.com

By Pavel

© 2010 Power by Pavel, Inc.

Training fashions swing from one extreme to the other. The bench press used to be the end all. Today it is a pariah exercise labeled ‘non-functional’. As often is the case, neither extremist view reflects the reality.

It is easy to like the bench press because it blows up the upper body so quickly and easily. It is just as easy to dislike it when you take a look at your typical light bulb shaped gym rat who lives for the bench. In the unlikely event that you will see him play touch football or do something else halfway athletic, he will move spasmodically like Inspector Clouseau defending against Cato.

Yet the blame for his pathetic lack of athleticism belongs not to what he is doing but to what he is not doing.

Research shows (ping Prof. Tom Fahey for details) that the BP, together with the DL, are the best predictors of throwers’ performance. Russian full contact fighters bench heavy and hit hard.  I believe the reasons these athletes get a lot more out of the bench press than a gym rat are three:

1) Powerful legs and hips

The Pecs & Co. were never meant to be the muscles to take the full brunt of a throw or a punch. They just add a cherry on the top of the leg and hip drive. Ergo, you need to squat and/or deadlift. Throwers do. So do Russian full contact karate fighters.

2) Flexible hip flexors that don’t interfere with power transfer from below

At the end of a throw and many other athletic moves the hips are supposed to be fully extended. If the hip flexors are too short they act as brakes for the powerful hips. The “bench and nothing but the bench” mullets have your typical non-athletic hips, with the hip flexors shortened by sitting.

Fighters and throwers, on the other hand, stretch their hips to “take the brakes off”.

3) Very strong rotational muscles that ‘link’ the lower and upper body

One of the midsection muscles’ jobs is transferring the leg drive into the arms with minimal losses. That takes a manly waist of Laurent Delvaux’s statue Hercules; Apollo’s pretty boy tummy and a beer gut alike are too weak to allow this strength to reach its destination, be it a thrown shot or something else. Because you can’t push a rope.

Russian throwers and fighters train their abs hard and heavy so their waists do not ‘leak’ strength.

The Full Contact Twist is a powerful midsection drill popular with Russian throwers and fighters.The FCT is one of the few exercises that I can honestly say revolutionized my training, wrote Steven Morris in MILO: a Journal for Serious Strength Athletes. No other exercise has improved my core strength and rotational power to that degree.

Photo courtesy Prof. Stuart McGill’s Spine Biomechanics Lab, University of Waterloo, Canada

It should be obvious that, unlike the typical bench pressing muscle head, a serious hardstyle kettlebeller has strong and flexible hips and a solid midsection. Which means you can get a lot of mileage out of the bench press. Here is how to use it to set a kettlebell military press PR within weeks.

You will be benching with a close grip. The CGPB is the best tool for strengthening the triceps. Its winning combination of very focused stress on this three-headed muscle and a very heavy weight used cannot be beat. The volume required for great results is ridiculously low by kettlebell standards and the overall fatigue is a lot lower than from kettlebell presses, due to lower coordination and overall tightness demands. Which means you can save your energy for important things like the US Secret Service Snatch Test.

A couple of CGPB technique subtleties. First, when you have positioned yourself on the bench place your hands on the bar as you would for diamond pushups: the index finger and the thumb of one hand touch their counterparts on the other hand. Without losing this angle slide your hands out until you are barely touching the smooth part of the knurling with the insides of your hands. Make sure the bar is pressing against the meaty heels of your palms and finally grip the bat. Second, “tear the bar apart” on the way up to maximally activate your triceps. If you do it correctly you should feel your rear delts.

Here is your weekly schedule:

1 CGPB, other ‘grinds’, barbell and/or kettlebell

2 Kettlebell ballistics, work up to an easy C&P single or two

3 Variety Day

4 CGPB, other ‘grinds’, barbell and/or kettlebell

5 Kettlebell ballistics, work up to an easy C&P single or two

6 off

7 off

Where it says “work up to an easy C&P single or two”, you had better believe it. To use an example, if your best press is 40kg x 2, your whole press session will look like this:

24kg x 3-5, 32kg x 1/2, 36kg x1

If you don’t own a 36, just press an extra single with the 32. This will feel like nothing after high volume pounding of the ETK Rite of Passage, but this is the idea. According to Drs. Verkhoshansky and Siff, “…the ‘degree of contrast’ in training… is a factor which enhances the functional responsiveness of the body.” Or, in Marty Gallagher’s words, “…institute a radical departure to what the body perceives as the current status quo…” It works both ways. When you get back to high volume pressing of Enter the Kettlebell! or Return of the Kettlebell, you will be a lot more responsive to it after your low volume stint.

In your first close grip bench workout find your 10RM in this exercise. Do easy sets of five making big jumps between sets and resting plenty until you start noticing the weight, then add a little more, rest a lot more, and test your rep-max. For instance:

95×5, 135×5, 155×5, 175×5, 195×5 (starting to feel it), 205x9RM

It does not matter if you got 9 or 11 reps, this is close enough and this is your cycle’s starting weight.

In your next CGPB workout do a couple of lighter low rep sets to groove your technique, then do 5 reps with that weight. Rest for 3-5min and do 3 reps. Rest for the same amount of time and put up 2 reps. Keeping the weight static and doing a triple and a double instead of a lighter set of five is a Power to the People! modification suggested to me by Jack Reape. This version has already made it into the Russian PTTP edition.

The above workout will be very easy. It is supposed to. When you are done take 20% of the weight off and do three sets of five with as little rest between them as possible. Here is what our hypothetical girevik would end up lifting:

135×5, 155×3, 185×1-2, 205×5, 3, 2 (3-5min between sets); 165×5/3 (minimal rest between sets)

Every workout add 10 pounds to the 5, 3, 2 sets. Not 5, not 2.5, and definitely not those mini-plates. When you have reached the point where it takes all you have got to press the weight five times, next workout still add another 10 pounds, but skip the first set. In other words, instead of 5, 3, 2, do only 3, 2 reps. Next time add another 10 and get rid of the set of 3 reps. You are down to one double. This is the end of the cycle. Skip your back-off 3×5 and in the next kettlebell workout test your kettlebell C&P. Report your PR on the www.dragondoor.com forum.

Power to you!