I’ve talked about the kettlebell snatch test a lot here in the past. Figured I’d write up an article that tells you the basics of this exercises, the different tests, a few tips on training it, plus a video showing it all in action.

New Article –> Kettlebell Snatch

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Hill sprints are always an excellent choice

There are many possible circuit training ideas. I’m going to list some just off the top of my head.

- Pick three exercises. Do each one for a minute before moving onto the next with no rest. Repeat this all for five rounds.

- Pick a strength exercises that you can only do for one to five reps. Have a conditioning move you can do a hundred reps in. Go back and forth between the strength exercise and conditioning exercise for a number of rounds. (This builds the ability to apply maximal strength while fatigued. Great for fighters.)

- Have 10-20 exercises of varying difficulties. Do as many reps of each before moving onto the next. Keep track of the reps for each exercise and your total time.

- Have an implement like a kettlebell on one end of a field. Do a set number of swings with it. Sprint to the other side of the field. Do a bodyweight exercise like pushups. Run back and repeat.

- Pick a number of exercises to work the whole body. Do a set followed by jumping rope for a minute. Go onto the next exercise then jump rope for a minute. Continue in this pattern stopping after you’ve done each exercise or just going once through them all.

There you have five potential workouts. With variations of each you could use these for the rest of your life.

Personally I like to mix it up with my circuits. Plan something then go after it. As long as you keep track of your workouts you can do something similar a month down the road and see how you’ve improved.

Alternatively, you can add a few reps or a bit of time to each exercise thus making each circuit harder. Do this on a regular basic and you have a formula for improvement.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. As for calve work as David mentioned about his Convict Conditioning Routine I haven’t directly worked my calves in even distant memory. Sprinting and/or jumping rope is all you need.

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David asked a follow up question regarding his Convict Conditioning routine. “Two questions: I forgot to ask, how would you add grip, neck, & calf work in there too; and can you give a more in depth outline of circuit training – how you would plan it?”

In today’s post I’ll cover hand strength training. For grip work I would train the hands two or three times per week. You could probably even get away with one session a week and still make good gains. Pick one to three exercises each time and go after it. These are the main types of hand strength but these are the main ones. Depending on your goals you may need other exercises.

Wrist levering – This can include wrist rollers, sledgehammer leveraging, dumbbell wrist curls, etc. Even handstands are good.

Crushing grip – This is usually done with steel spring grippers but can be trained in other ways.

Working the pinch grip with a block weight

Pinch grip – Pinching plates is the easiest form, block weights are great too, and then you can do feats like card and phonebook tearing.

Support grip – This is any type of holding. Kettlebell swings certainly work this. Farmer’s walk is probably one of the best exercises.

And many exercises cross over in different area. Bending nails works the wrists and your crushing and support grip. Plate curls will work your wrists and pinch at the same time. If you’re short on time I’d advise doing exercises that give you more bang for your buck.

Also for better hand health you should look at doing exercises like finger extensions especially if you go heavy into working the grip.

You don’t need to do heavy volume. Just one to a few sets is all you really need for your hand strength training.

In the next couple posts I’ll cover neck training and circuit training.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

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I received this question the other day after my post on Convict Conditioning, and since it was well thought out I’m going to give an in depth answer.

Hey Logan,

You obviously have far more experience than me and I don’t even compare to you in terms of strength/conditioning. You’ve done an awesome job from what I can see! I’d like your opinion, please I read Coach Wade’s “Convict Conditioning” and I want to do the “Big Six” moves!

Goals – strength in the “Big Six” and mutant conditioning.
Preference for the kettlebell swing.
‘Decent’ recovery abilities.
Equipment – barbell, dumbells, 35lbs & 70lbs kettlebells, & pullup bar.
Not much money.

I was planning on trying out the ‘Veterano’ routine with swings three times a week (light, medium, and heavy swing days). A concern–over training with back bridges and swings.

Do you think this a great way to reach my goals?
Is ‘Veterano’ not enough strength work?
Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you & God bless!
David

Considering your goals and equipment, I think what you have laid out is a good plan. If you want to get good at these moves you should do them. Adding in a conditioning component with the kettlebell swing makes it even better.

For those of you who don’t have the book yet the Veterano is a routine that consists of doing a few sets of one of the six exercises each day. In my opinion, since the volume is already kept minimal I believe this program would be better with more frequency.

These moves require a high degree of strength but also a high degree of skill. So practicing them more often should result in faster gains. One thing I learned from Pavel is that its better to do one set of an exercise everyday then six sets one day a week.

For this reason I would modify this routine to do two exercises each day instead of one. One arm pushups and bridges. Handstand pushups with hanging leg raises. And one leg squats with one arm pullups. This way you do each move twice a week instead of just once. Adjust the volume if you have to but I think this will give better results.

I wouldn’t worry about overtraining with the bridges and swings. If you’re knew to bridging or swinging just be sure to ease into it.

A light, medium and heavy swing days is a good way to approach it but I personally never liked light and medium days. When I train I want to go hard all the time. If it works for you do it but here is how I’d approach it.

While swings are one of my favorite exercises I caution you against relying on just one movement for your conditioning. When you do this you may become real efficient at that movement and your conditioning may not actually improve that much.

Its good to have a conditioning goal like a number of swings (see Bud Jeffries recent Kettlebell Swing article) to go after. But its good to have some variety too. Personally I would focus on swings one day a week and do some sort of circuit conditioning on another day. You can mix swings and snatches with other exercises like sprinting, burpees, jumping rope or many others. This’ll give you a different feel and end up being better for your endurance.

In fact this is what I am doing in my training right now except I’m focusing on kettlebell snatches instead of swings.

I hope that helps you out and if you have to ask any follow up questions. Be sure to let me know how you progress.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. If you want to check out Convict Conditioning, click here.

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Tire Flipping Can Build Strength and Endurance

How do you know if your conditioning is getting better?

Yes its easy when you do the same workout over and over again. If you are running then you know you’ve made progress when your times go down. If you are doing a set of kettlebell snatches or bodyweight squats you know you’re better if you can do more reps.

But does it really mean your overall conditioning is better? Perhaps you’ve just increased your skill in the exercise and built up the muscular endurance that was previously holding you back.

You may not really increase your wind or cardio capabilities.

You’ve likely heard of the SAID principle in training. That is Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. This means your body will get better specifically to what you make it do.

And what this can mean is that even though you are training hard, you could be getting better at one specific exercise, but if you’re not careful you can really be sliding back in the grand scheme of things.

There is no great example of what conditioning is.

One concept I shoot for is to be able to go into any arena of training and perform well, if not dominate. Obviously, I won’t be winning a powerlifting meet one day and running an ultra-marathon the next. But that’s a guiding principle for my training.

Back on the SAID principle we realize that there isn’t 100% carryover from any one thing to another. Much of the time there won’t even be 50% carryover depending on how you do things.

Are you conditioning yourself hard or are you building muscular endurance?

When we step away from the cardio machines and get into bodyweight exercises, kettlebells or whatever we start doing exercises for our conditioning that have a muscular component. This is a good thing. But you have to be careful.

You want to build muscular endurance and you want to build conditioning. You can build both at the same time. However, there is ALWAYS going to be one thing that fails first.

Pushups can get you breathing hard but unless you are one of those guys that can do them non-stop your muscles are going to force you to give up way before your lungs would.

Here’s a different example. I just finished a set of kettlebell snatches with the 53 lb. bell a couple hours ago. I hit seven minutes with a 25 rep per minute pace. That’s 175 reps in 7 minutes. My goal is 250 in 10. Something stopped me.

Was it my conditioning? I was sucking wind big time but no I could have kept going. Was it my muscles burning? Nope. With swings and snatches the load is fairly well distributed so no problems here. In this case it was my hands which tend to be the weak point for most people in this exercise. They tore open and in order to preserve myself from more damage I stopped.

There’s a problem when you rely on one means of conditioning. If I only did kettlebell snatches (or swings) I could never fully push the boundaries of my conditioning. I could increase my ability but not as well as if I did something else.

Let’s use the example of a guy that lifts weights in low rep sets. He also runs long distances to get his cardio. Do you see the missing component here? Will this guy be able to apply any strength and conditioning at the same time? You throw him into an intense circuit style training and he’ll crap out fast.

My case is to use a variety of conditioning exercises and methods to eliminate this problem. Variety is good here. Yes you should have goals and regularly do the same workout trying to progress. But on top of that add more.

Also you need to work different levels of conditioning. There’s a big difference between sprint level conditioning and longer term conditioning.

Think about the difference in running a hill sprint versus flipping a large tire for two minutes non-stop. Doing a ten minute snatch test versus a bodyweight exercise circuit that lasts an hour.

I have to credit Bud Jeffries primarily to opening my eyes to this. His Twisted Conditioning 1 & 2 go into more details on these concepts and much more.

If you missed the previous announcement check out the new www.Strongerman.com where we are working together to bring you to very best training information. And if you haven’t got those books yet do it now. They’ll make you train harder and in a more complete manner.

In the near future I’ll give you more on this subject including some complete workouts.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

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I’ve just released The Ultimate Guide to Handstand Pushups.

This book covers every detail you could think of on one of the greatest exercises, handstand pushups.

If you are working on doing your first rep you’ll find details on how to get there (not to mention a day by day training guide for that goal).

If you can do tons of reps you’ll find many ways to make them harder including changing positions adding weight and height.

And there’s much more covered like one arm handstands, how to do freestanding handstand pushups, common problems and more.

Check out the The Ultimate Guide to Handstand Pushups to find out the full details.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. Oh yeah, and you can get a discount on it now but only until Saturday. Check it out now.

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Here’s one good thing about having an established workout routine besides consistency.

When you’ve been doing things the same way for a period of time it allows you to take one variable and change it up. By looking at your results now as compared to before you can find if your new experiment is helping or hindering your progress.

I mentioned in my last email how I’m reducing the number of work sets on certain exercises. As long as I keep the exercises and everything else consistent I can see if I make the same progress or more or less.

It’s hardly a scientific experiment with control groups in a double blind study but its better than nothing.

You can use this method to test new exercises or variations. You can test different rep or set schemes. You can test eating or not eating before a workout. Just about anything can be tried.

In order to do this you need to have a well-established routine. From there decide on one thing to change. Keep at your routine with the new change for a few weeks and then look at the results. If it’s a good change continue on, if its not go back to how you were doing it.

And then you can begin a new experiment.

Have you done this before? And if so what have you found out? Comment below

In strength,
Logan Christopher

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After you train there is one thing you have to do in order to get stronger.

And that is RECOVER!

Without recovery you’ll only train yourself into the ground. You don’t have to recover 100% between workouts but you do need to get most of the way there.

In my workouts I’ve been doing five working sets for my main exercises. But as I progressed and the weights went up this became harder and harder. That’s to be expected.

However, I felt completely beat at the end of most workouts. It was too much and I felt a little rundown the next day. Sometimes this resulted in a less than optimal workout that day.

So this week I am starting an experiment. I’m cutting my working sets down from five to three sets. Just more than half the volume.

The thing is, in training, you have to do enough to trigger gains. From there it’s a matter of recovering than doing it again next time.

This experiment will mean less total work, though no less intensity. It should still be plenty to force myself to get stronger.

Plus, from less overall volume, the workout will take less time and less of my recovery ability.

If you’re not making gains like before perhaps doing less, not more is the ticket to breaking new ground.

I’ll report later on how this works out for me. I expect good things.

In strength,
Logan Christopher

P.S. I’ve upgraded the blog. It has a new look and more functionality than before. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

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