Legendary Strength Blog

In kettlebell competitions there are two main lifts. You must do the Jerk for 10 minutes straight. The other event is the Snatch for 10 minutes straight.

In case you don’t know what these moves are I will fill you in. If you have ever watched or done Olympic lifting then you will probably get it.

The Jerk is done with two kettlebells resting by your shoulders. Also known as the rack position. With an explosive leg movement you lift the bells upwards then drop down with a second leg dip and lock out the kettlebells overhead. Straighten your knees and you have 1 rep. The goal is as many reps as you can get without setting the kettlebell down.

The snatch is another explosive movement where the kettlebell is swung from between your legs to overhead. Again locked out overhead constitutes a single rep and the goal is as many as possible. You only use one kettlebell here and in competition a single hand switch is allowed. Usually this means five minutes with one hand then five with the other.

There is no magic in the 10 minute number. Five, six, or 20 minutes all work. Competitions are in ten minutes so it is commonly used.

In my eyes the greatest benefit of this training is mental toughness. When you have two kettlebells resting on you and you can feel the pain, where every rep burns, everything in you wants to put those bells down but the only thing stopping you is your decision to keep on going. You may be feeling like this at 6 minutes and still have 4 more to go, each more excruciating then the last.

The sad thing is that sometimes you will lose to this desire of comfort and set the bells down when you could have gone on. But more often than not you push through until the end.

Do you get this benefit from other kinds of training? Absolutely. But some more than others. High rep bodyweight exercises like Hindu squats or hill sprints are good examples. You can always push yourself a little faster, a little longer, or a little harder.

Low rep exercises don’t really build this. Sure you need the mind set to work hard and heavy, but there is a difference when your body is screaming at you to stop but you won’t let it.

The more uncomfortable you are, the more mental toughness you have the chance of building.

The next time you are training keep pushing until you can’t push anymore. Once you’re there reach down deep, use your will power, and keep going.

Grow Powerfully,
Logan Christopher

Yep, my car broke down.

Pretty bad place and time. I was on the way to the second day of the event, when the thing just turned off and would not turn back on. Luckily, I was cruising at speed so I was able to pull into a parking lot.

A call to AAA and I was towed to a repair place. Two days later it is ready to go. I hop in and start driving back to my brothers place to pick up my stuff so I can head out of town finally.

At a stoplight and the same thing happens. Uh oh! There was lots of traffic around. I flipped on the hazard lights and try to get the car started.

It turned on…only to die again immediately.

A few more tries, and I decide I need to get out of the road. Problem is the car is three lanes away from a parking lot and it’s rush hour.

Mind you I am in LA so no one is running over to help me out.

I start pushing it backwards so I can get a good angle on the parking lot of a restaurant. After at least five minutes of waiting, standing outside of my car, someone waves at me saying I can go.

So I am steering the car with one hand and pushing it with the other. This isn’t the smallest car in the world either. But for me it was actually easy.

Why should you train for the best in strength and endurance? Well one reason is that you may need it. In fact your life might just depend on it.

I was not in a very dangerous position here, but you never know when you might be. No one got hurt here (except my wallet paying the repair guys).

But everything is okay because I made it back home late last night.

So the next time you train, maybe give a thought to the fact that the last rep you do could be the one that saves your life or the life of someone else. You never know.

Grow Powerfully,
Logan Christopher

P.S. I couldn’t help but think I needed some chains so I could hook the car to my hair and pull it that way. But that is a story for another time.

And if you want to get really high reps then you need to learn the right way to do so. Learn from the people who have done it such as Valery Federenko.

Teaching it any other way does not make sense and is limiting your potential. All the decisions he makes are based on this.

It makes sense to me but I say why limit the kettlebell to its traditional use. It can be used for standard weightlifting stuff in many cases and it performs admirably.

Another point was the difference of going after your end effect. Do you want to be tense or relaxed. Too many people are too tight and instead of getting them to tense up even more to train they should be learning how to relax.

It is the same difference between hard and soft styles of martial arts (karate vs. tai chi for example).

Do people need to have high levels of absolute strength? Or are they better served by having high levels of muscular endurance?

Obviously you are going to need to be able to tense up and relax. The better able you are to do this, the greater of an athlete you are. You need to train for both but how you approach it, from one end or the other, is up to you.

Again optimally you want a high degree of absolute strength and strength endurance. But here too you can approach it from on side or the other.

With the two kettlebell jerk are you going to do 5 sets of 5 trying to handle heavy weights. Or do you work with lighter bells and do one long set and push your numbers higher and higher, eventually working up in weight.

Both sides are valid ways to train, in my opinion, but does one give faster results or better results? That is what the whole debate is about.

In the end your training has to be something you like, scratch that, love to do. People sometimes ask me how I motivate myself to train. To me that is a silly question because I don’t need motivation to have fun.

There are so many different ways to attain the strength and health you want, why spend time on anything less than your favorites.

Grow Powerfully,
Logan Christopher