Optimal Life Fitness, for health, fitness and a new lifestyle outdoors.

I hope this newsletter finds you fit and well, maybe not as fit as Michael Phelps and his golds or as quick as Usain Bolt, but maybe just fit and well in your own world. Speaking of the Olympics I’ve been reminded of a strength coaches quote to keep you motivated:

“Remember somewhere a little Chinese girl is warming up with your max!” (it’s not word for word but you get the idea- can’t remember the coaches name though)

In this our 10th instalment of the Extreme Kettlebell Newsletter we have a new member to introduce you to, a change of dates and an article from Tommy that appeared in Peak Performance.

Firstly we’d like to introduce our newest team member Nadia Minardi. Nadia joined the team last week and we believe Nadia will be an extremely useful addition to the team; she has a wealth or experience in the industry as a personal trainer, fitness manager and operations manager. For all course and product sales Nadia will now be your first point of contact- be nice and don’t make her angry she holds a Black belt 2nd Dan in Judo.

Our next Olympic Weightlifting Course for the Fitness Professional has had to change dates. It was scheduled for the 13th and 14th of September, but we have a very large EKI course in Manchester on the same weekend and we need all our tutors available for this course. The new date for the next Olympic Weightlifting for the Fitness Professional Course is the 27th and 28th of September to be held in London. For more information:

http://www.optimallifefitness.com/optimal_life_fitness/olf_calendar_olympic_weightlifting.php

For an in depth article chronicling the origins of kettlebells and kettlebell sport check out this article Tommy wrote for Peak Performance:

http://www.optimallifefitness.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=764#764

Thank you to those of you who have sent in their results from the protocols we forwarded on last week. If you are still interested in partaking in the assessment please let us know.

Enjoy the rest of the games!

Keep Lifting and Keep Strong

BJ and Tommy

Below are the graphs showing the results from our pilot study at York st John's University. Firstly a big thank you to John Gray for working with us on this and being the brains behind it all. Secondly, although just a pilot study and not conclusive set of results, these graphs do show some really interesting results.

John has taken a look at the initial results and has the following observations:

you appear to sustain high (80-90%)exercise for 4 minutes.
Doing intervals is possible and it appears that it may be possible to tailor, depending on using either time or reps, to sustain a %HRR training zone and therefore develop a specific endurance component.
It seems that you don't reach a steady state after 5 minutes which would indicate that you are working anaerobically throughout, but, due to the length of time the force output can be maintained, this would appear advantageous for developing anaerobic endurance.

"it could be suggested that there appears an cardiovascular and muscular endurance advantage to adding swings and snatch to a kettlebell training routine. From the observations of similar movements with bar and dumbbell, the development of these components might not be possible to a similar degree with traditional weight training methods due to the inability to sustain the force output for a comparative length of time."

John Gray 2008

Last week the Extreme Kettlebell Team went to York St Johns University to start their research into Kettlebell training. We had a great 2 days working with John Gray of the Sports Science Department. Our aim was to start exploring what effects kettlebells had on the human body. This meant that we would have to do some work! Firstly we were maximal tested on the treadmill, to allow us to relate the kettlebell exercises to our maximal output. This pilot study has set up some great studies which we are now setting up and are looking for people to take part. So any EKI's out there reading this who fancy contributing to the UK's first major scientific kettlebell research project should get in touch with us ASAP.


We spent the first day testing the our bodies physically, pushing ourselves to the limits and looking at the heart rates achieved at those limits. This was a great day and although immensely hard we have gained some really interesting results. The next day we woke up feeling like we did when we first used a kettlebell 5 years ago! Stiff and warn out we went back into the laboratories and started working on some initial analysis of the bio mechanics of the kettlebell exercises and their similarities/differences to olympic lifting and dumbbell lifting.



Although currently all the work is just part of a pilot study we aim to have some concrete results by the end of the year. We are also working closely with some athletes and students on studies looking at the effect kettlebells have on performance over time.



Keep an eye out for all the results of the pilot study which will be posted on the forum shortly.

Fitness First Newcastle were the kind hosts of the the first EKI course in Newcastle and what a huge success. We had 18 trainers take part and 18 trainers finished with their full EKI certification. So firstly congratulations to you all for completing the course and secondly it was great to work with such an enthusiastic group of trainers. On a personal level, obviously great to be back up north, but it was also great to see so many trainers from the area taking part. It looks like the north really is loving kettlebells, we already have 20 trainers booked into the Manchester course and it's over a month away.
Highlights for the weekend were definitely the guys challenging each other with the 40KG kettlebell. Turkish get ups and 1 arm presses seemed to be order of the day, with the guys getting up with ease with a 40kg.
With a wide range of backgrounds it was good to see some great discussions and questions coming up. It was also the first chance for the Extreme Team to present some of their research from York St Johns University, the pilot study ran last week produced some interesting results which we'll be posting shortly on our forum, so keep an eye out for this.

Once again thanks to all the group in Newcastle, best of luck with your training and look forward to seeing you on another one of our courses in the near future.