kettlebell training

Yesterday we started an interview with Kettlebell Secrets member, Sara Shafer, who has used strength training and kettlebells to transform her life. And when I say “transform” I really, truly mean TRANSFORM. In Part 1, Sara gave us a brief glimpse into some of her battles and what she’s overcome. It’s truly inspiring. So if you missed that, make sure you read it here before going any further.

Here’s Part 2:

GN: So kettlebell training has been therapeutic in more ways then one. Very cool. You recently trained for and competed in a GS meet, correct? How’d you do? (For readers: GS is a “Kettlebell Sport” meet where the contestants train in one or more exercises to complete as many reps as possible in a specific time period – usually 10 minutes.)

SS: I competed in the Long Cycle Clean and Jerk with a 20kilo and managed a Level 1 ranking. I was a bit frustrated because I missed ranking as a CMS (Candidate for Master of Sport, the second highest rank in that category) by 2 points (got 48 on my right and 46 on my left – needed 96 total for CMS), mostly because I lost count of my reps and was lazy (yes, lazy) in the first half of the event. I’ll compete at the IKFF nationals in November in the Long Cycle, and I plan to use a 24kilo there.  The other event I did was the 5-minute snatch. That one I did just for fun because I hadn’t trained the snatch at all for this comp.  I used a 24 just to see what would happen and I managed just short of 4 minutes (callus started to tear!!). That kind of made up for missing the CMS ranking.

This meet didn’t offer place rankings – these things are called “meets” and not “competitions” for a reason – but I have earned first place finishes at the powerlifting meets I’ve done: Best Female Deadlift at my first, and Best Female Lifter at the second. I mention my PL meets because I obviously did well even though I was the only person, male or female, who used no equipment (besides chalk).  I credit KBs for helping me forge the “bulletproof body” (a la Pavel) that helped me from a sound structural standpoint in both PL and KB meets.

GN: Those are phenomenal results. Many women can’t imagine using weights that heavy without the fear of bulking up, yet you’re a trim 155lbs and 6’1”. You’re incredibly strong and well conditioned. What do you attribute your outrageous success to?

SS: Really and truly, if I enjoy any kind of success it’s because I get a kick out of working hard.  We all know this but it bears repeating: you can have the best plan in the world but if you don’t put in the work you won’t get anywhere. There’s a kind of alchemy when a great plan meets a great work ethic, but I think that the limiting factor is often the work side of the equation.  That goes for lifting and for school. The best compliment I ever got was from a professor who said that I am “unflinching” in the face of whatever task set before me.  I have definitely flinched! But the follow through is what he was getting at, and I’m very happy to have earned such a reputation. Same with weights: if you want to get scary strong, you have to go through all the grueling steps to get there. I think that pushing myself in the gym helps me push myself with school. I’ve said it so many times, but the more focused I am with my training, the more focused I am with my dissertation.

GN: I LOVE that – “alchemy”! What a great way to describe that process! You’ve got a funny story about how this alchemy worked for you. You recently told me about a discussion on training philosophy with others at the gym where you train. They were training a little different than you, right? Can you tell us about that?

SS: After this past meet I mentioned that I’d prepared for using a 20kilo for this meet mostly by using the 24kilo with part of the Kettlebell Burn program. I thought since I plan on using a 24 at nationals, I should use the same program idea but use a 28 instead of a 24.  It was recommended that I use a program more focused on the competition such as the ones that people in the gym had used to prepare, and not the EDT style workouts I’d been doing. There’s no doubt that everyone on the team did really well and worked so hard – I’m proud of every one of us. But I can’t help thinking that there’s something behind the fact that I was one of only two women using the 20 for the long cycle (the other girl was on the visiting team) and that she dropped out and I didn’t. I’m not a big girl either, so it’s not like I have pure heft to make my lifts.  I absolutely attribute my ability to lift the way I do to my habit of lifting near-max for low reps. I did use one of the training programs that my fellow lifters used (by Ken Blackburn) for two weeks leading up o the meet – and, if you look at it, it shares a lot of similarities with what I was doing although it ventures above 3-5 reps. I do believe Ken’s program helped, but I also believe that how I trained initially not only didn’t hurt me at all but also helped me maximize my results on this program.

GN: Sweet! So you did the opposite of “conventional wisdom” and got better than conventional results. Way to go against the flow. Kinda fits with your life, huh?

Last question, for you, If you could narrow down just 3 pieces of advice about kettlebell training that you could give Kettlebell Secrets members, what would they be and why?

SS: Lift heavy. Work hard.  Be honest.

Lift heavy because it’s so much more fun than lifting light. “Fun” is obviously subjective here, but there’s a certain pleasure that comes with picking up a big weight. Lift heavy also because, in my experience, it builds a more aesthetically pleasing and functional body…if that’s what you want. Light weight and high reps have their place, but they only go so far (plus they get boring).

Work hard because 1) you want to lift heavy and 2) because it’s the most gratifying thing in the world to be able to see something that you’ve produced or achieved solely through your own efforts.  These first two points can be summed up with one of my favorite quotes of all time, from former Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman: “Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder but ain’t no one wanna lift no heavy-assed weights.” Obviously we’re not talking about bodybuilding, but how many of us want to do something without putting in the appropriate effort? You have to be honest with yourself about what you want and what you’re actually willing to do to get it.

Be honest with yourself about how hard you’re willing to work.  One thing I noticed as a trainer and as a professor is people want to achieve something, but aren’t willing to put in the effort to get there. They say they want to work hard but when you work them hard, they run. Don’t be the person who runs. The discipline it takes to do that is uncomfortable and unpleasant sometimes and you must be willing to enter that discomfort. Look at advanced degrees: two out of three people don’t complete their PhD. It’s punishing. I’ve cried because of the stress numerous times. Every day I have to reaffirm my efforts at my dissertation, at lifting, at personal relationships. But it’s so, so worth it in the end.

GN: Wow – I think that’s some of the best training advice I’ve heard in a long, long, time. Forget training advice – how about “life advice.” That’s solid stuff, Sara. And it definitely should get everyone thinking about more than just kettlebell lifting and training.

I appreciate you doing this interview and your excellent insights, Sara. Thanks and good luck – as if you’ll need it – finishing your dissertation. Don’t forget to keep us updated on your results from the Nationals in November.

Wrap Up

Without taking anything away from Sara, because she IS AWESOME, I think there are some key points she made that I’d just like to highlight.

1. We all have “issues” to overcome, so you’re not alone. Whether or not we choose to overcome them is entirely up to us and no one else. Personal responsibility is the key to any success.
2. Overcoming those issues with something positive, like strength training, can go a long way into forging us into better people, making contributions into the lives of others.
3. Good plans + Hard work = Success. Many of us skip the “hard work” part and wonder why we don’t see the results. “Work” – “hard work” – is where the “magic” happens.
4. Lifting heavy, especially for women and contrary to “conventional wisdom” is “where it’s at.” As Sara said, it builds an “aesthetically pleasing and functional body.”

My challenge to you is be awesome just like Sara. Get out of bed, look in the mirror, and do the best you can to be as awesome as you can be, for yourself and for others.

I heard a preacher say it best the other day, “This isn’t a dress rehearsal.”

If you want to experience similar successes as Sara, the simplest path is “modeling” – doing what she’s done. So I recommend that you grab a copy of Kettlebell Burn right here for single kettlebell training.

If you want something more aggressive, get Kettlebell Burn EXTREME! which uses double kettlebells.

Both will make you much, much stronger than you are now and both will pull off large amounts of body fat, depending of course on how much you have to lose.

And both will help you feel awesome while you’re doing them and upon completion.

I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. Sara’s truly an inspiring individual making her mark in her part of the world. Thanks again, Sara!

Every so often, I get some really interesting emails from my customers.

I recently got one from an equally interesting woman, Sara Shafer. Sara has totally transformed her life through strength training and with kettlebells. In fact, she went on to compete in Kettlebell Sport using some ideas that run against conventional wisdom.

Her story is truly inspiring and will help fire you up, get you off your but if that’s what you need, and get out and achieve your goals.  Sara agreed to do an interview with me and share her story which I’ve posted below.

Enjoy!

GN: Hey Sara, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. I know you’re really going to help out my Kettlebell Secrets members and they are really going to enjoy it.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, because you’re not necessarily “jane average” are you?

SS: I’m a doctoral candidate in Humanities at the University of Louisville and an adjunct professor of philosophy and religious studies at Marshall University. I know of several people with advanced degrees who train and compete – at least one person at the kettlebell gym I go to here and with whom I’ve competed is an MD – but I have noticed that there’s a tendency to assume that my PhD is in Exercise Phys or another of the “hard sciences” when people find out I lift.  My dissertation is on the development of Franz Kafka’s use of silence and gesture as a stylistic device in narrative.  Heavy on language as well. I have to be fluent in German and Yiddish as well as have some basic competence in French, Hebrew and Greek.  Training is what I do to keep my sanity while I’m slogging through my dissertation.  People are also surprised when they find out I lift because I don’t embody the weightlifter stereotype: I’m 6’1” and 155 lb – pretty skinny.

GN: Wow – that’s impressive! Not too many people will ever venture into that world. Speaking of “Metamorphosis”, you made a few yourself. Can you tell us how you got into strength training?

SS: My first exposure to strength training was through a close friend of my mother’s who was really into bodybuilding. I think it grew out of a general effort of his to expose me to fitness. In 7^th grade, I weighed over 200 pounds, and through diet and walking I got myself to a healthy weight. Mom’s friend made me conscious of this other side of fitness, and I fully embraced it. Or I embraced bodybuilding. I had a pretty steady diet of Muscle&Fitness and Flex magazines, and they have these images of men and women with fantastic physiques, the physiques that many people associate with strength and athleticism. Even while I was a long-distance runner through high school, I lifted all the time – I found that when I lifted, I didn’t get injured.

GN: Yeah, that’s very similar to my background – heavy on the Muscle Tabloids and some distance running in high school. I actually ran as prep work for wrestling, but I found that the strength training made me a much stronger wrestler and probably saved me from some injuries too. And what made you get your CSCS? Have you found it helpful in your field?

SS: I got my CSCS in 2005. I’d known about the certification for years because so many contributors to the magazines I read had it. It was just a dream til one day I took a practice quiz for the cert on the NSCA’s website and aced it. I thought maybe I could actually pull it off, and in 2005 I did.

If by “field” you mean my academic field, you’d be surprised how helpful it has actually been. Successfully completing the CSCS exam made me realize that I could actually turn dreams into reality. Having such prestigious credentials behind me gave me a sense of validation and that carried over into parts of my life not related to athletics.

The other obvious carryover from my CSCS is that training athletes and teaching students present similar challenges: how does one demonstrate and communicate a given idea to a wide variety of individuals? How can one develop a variety of teaching tools and methods that can be used when confronted with students who have many different strengths and weaknesses?  This is incredibly challenging but very rewarding when you can figure it out.

GN: Yeah, coming from a liberal arts instead of science background myself I can see that. I also see a pattern emerging here keeping with the Kafka theme, from bodybuilding to scientifically backed strength training with your CSCS and then on to kettlebells; which at first may throw people off because a lot of people mistakenly believe kettlebells are a lot of hype, but there’s quite a bit of science validating the claims about them. So how did you get into kettlebells? And how long have you been using them? (I always wanted to use a semi-colon in an interview question, so thanks for that.)

SS: I first heard of kettlebells – as many of us probably have – through Muscle Media magazine, for which Pavel used to write articles. I thought it was cool because at the time it seemed so foreign and avant garde…plus I was really into anything Russian (big Dostoyevsky fan).  But Pavel’s training philosophy seemed absurd to me at that time, doubtless because of my Muscle&Fitness-induced training coma.

GN: Yeah, I know what you mean – I was a big fan of anything “Eastern Bloc” or “Russian” with regards to training early on in my career and would read anything I could get my hands on. I remember the days of Muscle Media when Pavel answered the “Question of Strength” columns. I got hooked because it helped me get my “fix” of the “Russian” stuff. Sorry, as you were saying…

SS: I was living in the middle of rural Appalachia in the late ‘90s, and access to kettlebells was completely nonexistent. When I moved to Louisville, KY, for graduate school, I finally had access to kbs. I’ve trained under some great instructors.  It took time for me to sever ties with bodybuilding and traditional cardio, but after years of trial and error I found that my body responds better to the style of training I do now.

GN: What have some of your results been using kettlebells? Any specific programs or methodology that you follow?

SS: I could talk about physique and strength improvements, but my training has done so much more than that for me. I found that training for strength and power suited my body better than bodybuilding-style workouts alone ever did. I’m much leaner, stronger and more muscular than I ever was when I ran and did conventional lifting all the time.  If I have a method, it’s “pick up heavy things.” Everyone who knows me knows that, left to my own devices, I’m just going to lift the heaviest ‘bell I can – even if the point of the drill is to get max reps, I’d rather lift what I can with the heaviest bell possible than get in more reps with a lighter weight!  When there’s some concrete goal, like a competition, I follow a more defined plan.  One of the first plans I actually followed to the letter was Kettlebell Burn 2.0, and following that Kettlebell Burn Extreme. They just made sense for how I normally like to train anyway, but with the added thrust of a time limit. This is going to sound like a shameless promotion, but once you see the kinds of aesthetic and functional gains that I did with these programs, you don’t turn back!!

One of the greatest gifts that training has given me is to help me distance myself from some serious psychological problems that I’ve been holding onto for years.  I’m recovering from some fairly insidious exercise and eating disorders. Seeing my progress with lifting and knowing that I must take care of myself in order to preserve and enhance my progress has done more than any therapist or medication ever could. That’s gold.

That is “gold” indeed. We’ll pick up the rest of the interview with Sara tomorrow, including how she did the exact opposite of what she was “supposed to” do and ended up beating her competition.