Question from a russian dude

[sk213]

In no way mean to be mean or say that I know better, but want to express my cultural shock.

I see that most of yall doing 2 kettlebells at the same time and to me, coming from Soviet school of kettlebell, it seems a bit "weird" as I was taught that a kettlebell is a single arm thingy. Also how you got these mad heavy weights? We used to have only 16kg, 24kg and 32kg. That was all.

I'm faaaar away from being knowledgeable or an expert but was going to kettlebell classes back in the school days and doing kettlebell since. Today, after discovering this subreddit I am under a heavy impression that even though we use the same shapes of kettlebell, the ideas behind exercises are radically different.

How it got so different?

 

[anonymousgirl26]

@sk213 Modern Russian Kettlebell competitors use two bells at the same time for lifts like the double clean and jerk (long cycle).

The weights are sold from several vendors, from gym supply stores to specialty kettlebell stores, which are generally online only. Kettlebell Kings for example is a US company that sells weights up to like 92kg.

There is a huge difference between hard style kettlebell lifting and the sport style or competitive kettlebell lifting. They will even use different types of weights (granted, there are no rules against using the competition style for hard style lifting).

 

[sk213]

@anonymousgirl26 wow! interesting! thanks for info!

by any chance you have some good links/articles how the split between the schools happened?

me back again with nostalgia: kettlebell was always a thing that everyone had on their balcony and it was always only one. And now I'm wondering, if it was just lack of money to get two?

 

[anonymousgirl26]

@sk213 There is a lot of myth around all this, I am not certain what is backed up by history and what is lore. In some of the books they mention that Kettlebells in Russia came in like two or three sizes and the suspect that during the Soviet times it was probably just due to the weird manufacturing culture for consumer goods. If I can recall, they were 1 pood, 1/2 pood, and 2 pood weights. 16kg, 24kg, 32kg.

I believe a man named Steve Cotter has put together some content regarding the history of the two styles and how they came to the United States. You should look him up but I don't have any specific articles off the top of my head.

The story as I have personally put it together, and this is probably more lore than history, someone who knows should correct me. Pavel Tsatsouline came to the US to start a training business that involved Kettlebells in the 1990s. It became what we know of as Hardstyle. Valery Fedorenko also came to the US and started the World Kettlebell Club, which was the Sport Style's introduction (or at least early popularization) into the US. Both men moved here in the 1990s. American Steve Maxwell was also a huge source of information for the hardstyle lifting.

At the time, Kettlebells were obscure in the US. There are photos of people using them back in like the 1920s. I have heard that there was some in the 1960s, but I have no memory going to the gym as a teenager in the early 2000s seeing them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hands_Anyhow

This is a photo of German Arthur Saxon doing a two Hands Anyhow with a kettlebell. He died in 1921. He wrote a book where he actually talks about training with a kettlebell The Development of Physical Power in 1905. Kettlebells predate the Soviet Union, and there were people developing methodologies for them outside of Russia.

I really think that much of the Russian aspect of Kettlebells is that Kettlebell Sport is practiced in Russia, and that Pavel was a a Russian immigrant who highly played into this when marketing his business in the 90s and 2000s. His books were full of "Russian Secrets" and while I don't doubt that a substantial portion of the work is derived from Soviet research, much of it was not (if I recall, even even mentions this in some of the books).

 

[sk213]

@anonymousgirl26 Oh thaaaanks! Amazing sum up and read Love kettlebell lore

I started kettlebell because until was 17 I was 100% sure that Leo Tolstoy invented kettlebell when he was in military artillery division by putting a handle to the cannon projectile.

 

[hunter101]

@sk213 Eugen Sandow published his "Sandow's System of Physical training" in 1894, which apparently features instructions on the "swing ring-and-ball lift from the ground overhead", aka the snatch.

He'd step forward to catch the kb, sort of like the old school split snatch.

One fun note is that he teaches thumb forward on the snatches. also,

As the ball gains the elevation of the head in the ring-grasped hand ofthe outstretched arm, tilt it to the back of the hand, by an adroit turnof the wrist, at the same time thrusting the arm fully out, [...]

So rotate and punch through to finish the snatch. And

observing the caution not to injure or break the forearm by permittingthe ball to come rudely into contact with it as it is swung aloft.

Don't bang your forearm with the kb.

In general, both kbs and clubs seem to have been very popular in the West until the rise of barbells, especially adjustable barbells. I heard somewhere that Indian clubs were used by the British during World War 2 to keep the soldiers fit.

An extra fun fact, the Olympics featured weightlifting from the beginning, but it took a while for it to be standardised. If I remember correctly, the first Olympics had two guys lift the same weight, so as a tie-breaker the judges used the beauty of the way they performed the lift.

 

[sk213]

@hunter101 when you get your book published? I am not joking! You know soooo much interesting stuff that you should really consider! (Sorry, it's very hard to not sound ironic on the internet nowadays, but honestly trying my best). Or maybe I can read something from you online? (I am into reading even more than into kettlebells).

And yeah, gonna ask in my bookshop tomorrow about the books I've mentioned. Thank you sooo much!

 

[hunter101]

@sk213 Hah, I'm a different guy to the one above

And this was just some random tidbits I've picked up, God knows where. The Sandow bit was just that I knew kettlebells used to be extremely popular in Europe, and it'd make sense for Sandow to have used them, so I thought I'd do a quick search.

 

[manelee]

@anonymousgirl26 Pavel’s schtick is funny cause he’s actually from Belarus.

 

[googs]

@sk213 Waaaay back before anyone much in the US had heard of kettlebells there was a book publisher named John du Cane. He did a lot of obscure martial arts books for zany low interest Kung Fu mostly and internal arts like Chi Gung. It didn't make much money and he drove a limo part-time to make cash. He would edit books while his prom clients got drunk and then drive them home.

While searching for new authors he came across Pavel at a local community college day. He said that you paid $10 and could go to any session for any of the lectures being done. Pavel was doing Pavel's thing and he recognised what a charismatic presenter he is and how his knowledge was counter culture to the pump and blitz style bodybuilding content in vogue. He also had a great back story that could be well marketed.

John paid to get an article in Milo (the infamous Pickle Juice and Vodka article), into Muscle Media 2000, and onto T-Nation, and suddenly he was "the Russian secret for strength and conditioning". One day, while talking training at Pavel's house, John noticed a KB sat in a corner gathering dust and asked what it is. Pavel tried to talk him out of it saying he wouldn't be interested and that it wasn't for him etc, but he eventually showed him a few things and john realised immediately how powerful this could be as a marketing tool - here he had this Russian dude with this Russian tool no one know of. It was iconic, it was different, and it was incredibly marketable. Pavel didn't actually want to teach kettlebells but was convinced. (And you could see this when he split to create StrongFirst as he wrote a series of articles titled. "The Best..." and it was best squat, best hinge, best press, etc and NONE of the choices were KB choices. It's just not where his passion lies).

So John was the guy who effectively created the whole thing and Pavel was the face and the knowledge. Together a great team and certainly better together than they have ever been apart.

In the early RKC years it was pretty slow. Then they started to build some momentum and needed some extra Master trainers because it was impossible for someone to do a good job presenting solo to such big groups for a three day weekend. (Seriously, if you've not done it, teaching solo for a three day weekend is awful). The first lot of Master trainers was Steve Maxwell, Steve Cotter, Mike Mahler, and another guy whose name I always forget.

Around this time, Dragon Door brought Valery Federenko to a cert. There was no competition, they were trying to help and he was the king as far as KB training was concerned. Then some of the guys, like Cotter, went to some GS comps and got annihilated. Just embarrassed. They had gone along thinking that with their HS training they'd dominate but some of the comments from that era were hilarious in terms of how they felt about their performance. (There used to be a board called IrongarmX that had a KB sub forum. There was one thread in particular that was like 100+ pages and was the entire history of DD/ RKC/ Pavel and that era with all these guys like Maxwell, Cotter, etc commenting).

So Cotter is at home one night and he's got his blog doing pretty well. Back then you had affiliate links for DD events. They were good money as you got 10% of event sales if someone clicked through your link. I've had events where I made $5k+ from. my affiliate links so they were well worth having. Anyway, he gets a phone call off Pavel saying he needs more banners or something. Basically insisting that Steve's personal blog be rebranded as an RKC blog or he's fired. Steve tells Pavel to go fuck himself (funnily enough, identical to my last ever conversation with him) and proceeds to go to all corners of the internet and make comments about John du Cane and Pavel being gay lovers. He gets banned form the DD forum to try to minimise any further damage. (Incidentally, Steve Maxwell is 100% convinced Pavel is gay after some events they taught together. Not that it matters if he is or isn't, but Maxwell wasn't influenced by this incident at all, so it was funny to hear him talk about this when I met him. Also had choice words to say about Pavel's alleged military background, which anyone who could do maths should have been able to figure out anyway.) Steve then goes full into GS and goes from already amazing (and he is a super freak physically) to absolutely incredible.

At this point it's like 2007 and the original Masters are burnt out and they bring in the next lot - Kenneth Jay, Dave Whitley, Brett Jones, and a few more. DD does a stellar job of making these guys into super heroes so that they are the attraction at events. (At John's Marketing Mastermind that he ran a few times, he gives an entire presentation on this aspect of building the DD business and how to use it in your own business). This lot of guys go to some GS comps too and suffer the same fate as the previous round. Whitley's comments about this were pretty funny I remember as he's a big, strong dude and was not at all used to struggling.

Fast forward to now and you can see guys like Levi Markwardt who did a HS cert (can't remember if he did RKC and then went to SF or just started at SF) and then left, because like anyone wth eyes, he could see that what is being sold/ promised isn't actually what is delivered and that the results from GS are far superior. And you can see that same path repeated over and over with anyone who starts with HS because of the marketing and then heads to GS.

 

[sk213]

@googs fascinating stuff! and thank you soooo much for book recommendation!

your comment should be a top post on its own! or a book

ah but Pavel is Belorussian I think he has Bachelors at Minsk Uni

 

[googs]

@sk213 Pavel’s background is different to the marketing claims, for sure.

 

[donaldsbo]

@sk213 So both kinds of training: general fitness (also known as "hardstyle") and kettlebell sport come from Russia/Soviet Union. For general fitness traditionally you can just use one, but also two. For kettle sport you use two in jerk and one in snatch. Later they put LC and you also use two there.

Best athletes in the world come from Russia in kettlebell sport, so it's quite popular there. Traditionally training weights are 24kg and 32kg for men, but there are heavier ones basically everywhere.

 

[nelsa89]

@donaldsbo I’m curious about how widespread hardstyle is today in Russia because every video I have seen recently is of a girya competition (not hardstyle).

 

[anonymousgirl26]

@nelsa89 I suspect its more or less pretty obscure in Russia. Much of the Hard Style stuff was popularized in the US by Pavel and Co. There are countless references in the books by American and other western trainers who contributed to the body of work that we associate with hard style training. The literature to come out of Russia about anti-glycotic training might be it.

I would also be curious as to how popular Kettlebell Sport is in Russia. I have a feeling that even in Russia its a fairly niche sport with a rather small following.

 

[cavitill]

@anonymousgirl26 I've been trying to understand the big picture of kb in Russia by using Google translate to read books and social media, i get the impression kb sport is something like wrestling in the US - it's widely taught in schools (as an elective?) their is an elite collegiate level that is well developed, but its unglamorous so anyone outside of the small percentage who participate know nothing about it. How many Americans could tell you who the NCAA wrestling champ? And yet almost every middle/high school has a wrestling program, you can go to college on a scholarship if you are good, etc. Someone will correct me if its a bad analogy but its the only way i can square the fact that while Russian athletes are unambiguously the best sport lifters in the world, the Russian online discussion ive found consists mostly of people talking about how its painful/dangerous or recommending to each other to read Simple and Sinister to learn the "American" style of lifting. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

 

[anonymousgirl26]

@cavitill I have Russian friends who grew up in the 90s, they tell me that they have seen them around, and it would be something that they remember boys lifting at school, but they never personally touched one and don't really know what to do with it. One of my friends associates them with me, an American, because she knows I use them, and then one of her friend's husband also lifts them with what I think is a more hard style.

But as for like, general fitness, I don't think its super common in Russia.

Most Americans probably associate Kettlebells with Crossfit. Just because there are like 5000 Crossfit gyms in America and they might have seen clips of it somewhere.

 

[cavitill]

@anonymousgirl26 I saw an interview with Denisov (kb sport absolute champion) where he says the gyms that book his seminars inside Russia are mostly CrossFit gyms, whereas outside of Russia there's more interest in kb sport. Also seen from a few sources it's not uncommon in wrestling/boxing/MMA gyms. But the "get fit at home with a kettlebell" type of lifting doesn't seem to exist there in a meaningful way.

 

[anonymousgirl26]

@cavitill The whole get fit with weights of any kind is more popular in the US than it is in most other places, and the other places where it is getting popular is a cultural export of the US (even if they have their own tradition of it 100+ years ago).

 

[cavitill]

@kail What I meant is kettlell in Russia is about as common as wrestling is common in the US - both are sports taught as early as middle school/high school as part of the public educqtion system, and both are relatively unknown outside of direct participants