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Primal Foundations Podcast
Welcome to the Primal Foundations Podcast! We will dive into what I believe are the 4 essential foundations you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
Strength , Nutrition , Movement , and Recovery.
Get ready to dive into discussions that will guide you on your transformative journey to unlocking your path to optimal health.
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Primal Foundations Podcast
Episode 50: Strength, Speed, and the Art of Coaching w/ Hunter Crine
Navigating the noise of the fitness industry can feel overwhelming, but Hunter Crine, founder of Kettlebell Coach University (KBCU), has forged a clear path to success. Beyond mentoring top coaches, Hunter has built a thriving community where professionals can grow, learn, and support each other.
He shares why kettlebells are his tool of choice, how they enhance recovery and mobility, and the crucial role of training speed and power—often neglected but essential for longevity. His 16-week KBCU certification fills gaps in traditional coaching, providing a structured path to mastery.
Ready to elevate your coaching? Hunter’s insights will inspire you to embrace consistency, build community, and refine your craft.
Connect with Hunter:
https://www.kettlebellcoachuniversity.com/
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PRIMAL FOUNDATIONS PODCAST-
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Today's guest is Hunter Krein, a seasoned strength coach mentor and the visionary founder of Kettlebell Coach University, also known as KBCU. With over a decade of experience, hunter has dedicated himself to teaching fitness professionals how to master the art of coaching, enabling their clients to reach their full potential. Hunter, welcome to the show, sir.
Speaker 2:Hey man, Thanks for the nice intro. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I love talking bells. You know I said off air. We have some mutual people that we know in common Eric Salvador, who I met at Strong First Barbell he's the first person that kind of mentioned your name. And then our local boy in Chicago, nate Benuelos, who's a dear friend of mine, has talked about you, your program and love to get into chopping it up and just talking about Bells and how you got into the fitness industry. Let's do it, man. Can you tell the listeners some people that might not know your background of what led you to pursue a career in fitness coaching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I know I fell in love with lifting when I was like 14. And I think I fell in love with the ability to see adaptation happen. So you know, 14 year old kid, kind of overweight, got in a weight room with the football team, fell in love with it. Dude, like I think it was my structure.
Speaker 2:I was strong at 14. I could trap bar 405, squat 315, box squat, 315 without really any training. So when I did that I was like, oh, this is sick, I'm good at this. And like I'd be in school itching to get to the weight room monday, wednesday, friday, and so from there it opened up an obsession with consuming all muscle and fitness. T Nation, you know articles, all the bodybuilding kind of stuff at the time is what I got into. And I would go to the gym and I would do it like what's Phil Heath doing, I'm doing it, what's Jay Cutler doing, I'm doing it. And so you know I fell in love with it that way.
Speaker 2:When it came to college, the closest thing to that was I saw was athletic training. So I went for that, quickly realized I didn't want to tape ankles and so got into strength and conditioning and after college decided to pursue my master's at Hofstra in sports science and also got a job as a personal trainer, and my parents dropped me off. I'm from a very rural place. Small town Parents were, like you, sure about this? It's like, yeah. And my parents dropped me off. I'm from a very rural place. Small town Parents were, like you, sure about this? It's like yeah.
Speaker 2:And so then I just got thrown into it with no exit door, just had to learn how to do it at a high level, fell in love with the personal aspect of it. So I had amazing clients in all different industries. You know lawyers, accountants amazing clients in all different industries. You know lawyers, accountants, entertainment design you know these kinds of things. And you know, dude, they were schooling me on a lot of things in their own right. You know, I was a young kid and I just fell in love with that part of it and that's what got me into it and sparked my love for learning and my passion for the career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you went to Penn State as well as Hofstra, correct? And you know going through university. Do you feel? While you were there, did they prepare you for you know being a strength coach as well as like give you some tools to be a business owner?
Speaker 2:So that's a great question. The athletic training program I was in was extremely demanding. When I say that, I mean we had our course load, but then we also were responsible for 20 hours a week actually in the facilities in Division I athletics, and so that was super demanding. That's kind of when I realized I didn't want to do that and that's when I pivoted to strength conditioning. But still I was in the highest of the high division one strength program or strength rooms football, gymnastics, track and field, volleyball, these kinds of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you see how it runs at the highest level, dude, there's something that now you have the context for. Oh, this is how this goes, okay. But as far as like all the knowledge that I use now, I can't really say that like I learned that at Penn State or Hofstra, like I learned that from mentors who were doing it at the high level and I could see how they were doing it. Of course you get the baseline stuff you get in a textbook like kinesiology, knowledge and stuff, but I wasn't the best student, student man, I was there.
Speaker 2:Having a great time is the reality of the situation and, um, you know, I think every kid at that age is trying to figure a lot of things out. So you know, when I go back to speak at Penn State it's kind of like, yeah, you guys should realize the moment you're in right now because there is so much for you to absorb and I'm sure if I had the mindset I have now I would have gotten a lot more out of it. But my experience came from being in the trenches, having great mentors, and the learning really sparked at a later age. But yeah, it was a fun time, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:Mentorship is really important, and especially young coaches too. We all, we all come out of college, whatever, like we, I know everything you know. And then as you start going through and and kind of finding your own path, you realize like the more that I do know, I figure out, the actually the less I know, because there's so much information, so many people do different things and having a mentor, I think it's really really underrated. I think people think asking people for help is a sign of like, oh, I don't know anything. Well, guess what, buddy? Like we all don't know what we don't know and it's great. Do you feel that people should be pursuing mentorship?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let me just define what I think mentorship is quickly. And let me just define what I think mentorship is quickly. So I think social media has changed things a little bit, which means anybody has a platform these days and I think a lot of trainers follow accounts with a lot of followers, but they don't realize what it takes to get a lot of followers in a lot of these situations. What it takes to get a lot of followers is a lot of these situations. What it takes to get a lot of followers is to be really good at video editing, content creation and creating a brand. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have decades of experience in the trenches doing the things that I want to learn how to do. So a lot of the mentors I have dude. Some of them you can't even find on Instagram and you know they really only let certain people around them. Others are and have low follower counts. Like I don't think any of my mentors have over.
Speaker 2:You know, I guess Fred blew up recently, but like the point is that you need to know where to look and you need to know what information to allow into your brain, because there's so much information out there. So how I found my mentors was I developed at a young age in my career this really humble attitude that I've always had, which is that I would love to pay somebody to teach me all that they know, because I know if I do that I'm going to get smarter than everybody else. And that's kind of. If you have a blockade against asking for help and seeking it out, you're either never going to get to where you want to go or it's going to take you a long time and maybe you don't even know where you want to go because you're so self-righteous and you're like I have to know the answer. If you have that mindset, dude, like that is a fixed, not a good place to be, you want to be in the growth mindset which is like okay, what can I pick up today?
Speaker 2:I learn every day, bro. Like in some way I learn every single day, whether I'm reading an article, I'm reading a blog, I'm working with a client, my clients teach me a lot of shit. So you know, when you learn all the time, you separate yourself because people can tell. And so I think for me finding mentors that you can either do their mentorship you can go go down, watch them coach their athletes. You can break bread with them, have dinner with them, have big conversations around these things. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about like buying a program and doing the program Like you can do that too. I've done that as well but you got to find people that really align with your values and align with where you want to go. And then you got to ask a lot of good questions.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't always have to be a transactional relationship either. I feel like people think everything has to be transactional. You know I'm going to follow this person or connect with them so they can do something for me type deal, but it's this is an ongoing endeavor of networking and relationships and finding people to like, lean on and get advice from. You know and, and as people go through and they start developing, you know their, their path in life. You know failure right, I talk about this all the time. But what? What's your views on failure and why do you think it could be important?
Speaker 2:So I don't think failure exists. No failure, yeah, I talk about like I hear, like you have to use the word failure because it's like you know. I guess you would term success as I accomplished what I thought I was going to accomplish, and failure as, oh, that didn't go exactly how I thought it was going to go. But I think the reality is more like we don't have any control on where we're going to really end up. You know we do through our actions, but it could change. The iterations could always change. Like I didn't know I was going to be right here doing exactly what I was going to do 10 years ago. I had goals, I wanted to grow, but I just focused on the processes of what it takes to grow. And if you focus on your actions on a daily basis, your processes on a daily basis, more than where am I trying to go, you can't really fail because, like, if I wake up every day and I consume information and I go into every session with I want to be the best at this job as humanly possible, like, yeah, some of my timelines aren't going to get met, it's not going to go exactly how I thought it was going to go, but if I do it long enough, dude, and I'm directionally correct, I might feel like I failed now because I didn't hit that timeline. But in five years, with retrospect, I'm like, holy fuck, that bad thing was actually a really good thing, because now I'm here and so that's. I mean, everybody said this quote in different ways, when everything gets attributed to Winston Churchill, but he has a quote which is like some bad things are good and some good things are bad. I just heard Derek Jeter talking about this too. But we perceive something as failure, as being a negative, when in reality that negative now could be positive then. So if we block out this idea of failure, success, we don't try to get too high, we don't try to get too low and we focus on the processes, like what does somebody great at this do on a daily basis? Let me do that and just be cool with the results. Yeah, there's going to be fear, bro, results. Yeah, there's gonna be fear, bro. Yeah, there's gonna be some bad days. Yeah, there's gonna be some self-doubt, but if we can kind of keep ourselves calm through those things and just continue, I mean the results are gonna be beautiful. Down the road.
Speaker 2:A lot of people stop, though, tony. They get to a place where they don't know if what they're doing is working, because it's not immediate gratification. They get into the valley of despair which James Clear talks about. So I work hard. Then I get to this valley of despair where I don't know if it's working. I'm thinking about quitting. I'm thinking about, oh shit, should I do something else? And that's where most people stop thinking about oh shit, should I do something else? And that's where most people stop. But if you can put the reps and time in, even in the uncertainty, you get out of the valley of despair and that's where compounding interest starts to accumulate. And all of a sudden we start to see a takeoff and then you get to another valley of despair, you know. So that's kind of this. But the people that succeed are the ones that get through the valleys and don't let that self-doubt, that failure, stop them.
Speaker 1:I like to use, like strength training is a great. It's just a great metaphor for life. You know, everybody has certain goals. If you don't hit the goal like you don't get that back squat you wanted, like, oh, I didn't get it. Well, you didn't fail the back squat, you just learned. You just learned, you know, hey, it didn't work out today being consistent and making sure that you're putting the time and the effort in and, yeah, having everybody's got those timelines, whether they be sports, specific aesthetics or however. I got that thing in Cabo, I got to look good for or whatever but I think, just the consistency and moving forward and being okay with things If they don't go your way. Yeah, you didn't fail, you just learned. It's the Thomas Edison thing Like, oh, you got a light bulb, you made a light bulb. He's like, no, I figured out 900,000 ways how to not make a light bulb and only one of them worked.
Speaker 2:Find your example even more, because I think you're 100% correct. And then I think the high level thinking is the assessment of why it didn't go your way, and there's a million factors in that specific, in that specific example. Why didn't my back squat go up? Well, what was my sleep like? How's my nutrition been? What's my stress levels been like? Did I just move? Did I just go through a breakup?
Speaker 2:You know there's a ton of reasons why we like to simplify down to X and Y. It went up or it didn't. So it's success or failure day for you. You could have not, you could have had a hell of a bender the weekend before. If you're a young kid, like when I was like 20 in New York, like you know, uh, being out all weekend and then, okay, we're going to try to hit this squat on Monday. It doesn't go up. It's not the squats fall, it's the lifestyles fall.
Speaker 2:And it's the same thing in business dude, which is like, okay, this didn't work out exactly how I said, for as many successes I have, I have just as many failures. Failures or learning opportunities. But why? You know, is there things in my life right now I'm saying yes to that are draining my energy that aren't really do the market research or understand what it was, or is nothing wrong, and that back squat was just not supposed to go up this week but you're going to get it in two weeks because the training hadn't been enough yet. Like I think that's a huge thing in business and and the other side is like people want what they want and they want it now, but, like yo, have you given five years or a decade of hard ass work to then reach your hand out and say I expect this, like. So that's how I think about it. I think it's a good conversation to have.
Speaker 2:I think the result, how it comes down to in the life, is most of us need to take a big fucking deep breath and just say calm down. What's the main thing? The main thing comes down to one question. It's in a book called Essentialism by Greg McCown. He says if you could wake up tomorrow and you could only do one thing for a living, what would it be? And if the answer is coach human beings, then when all of these options and all of these things are swirling in our head, we just go right back to that and there's a lot of comfort and safety and just being like bro. We get to impact people's lives on a daily fucking basis. We love what we do. Why are we so worried about when we're going to get to where we want to get? Now, as I give this advice, I think to myself in my head I need this, to give this advice to myself almost every single day, because it's a real thing, it's a real thought, but you got to learn how to talk to yourself like that. No, it's going to be okay, dude. We're doing exactly what we're supposed to do. How's our processes? They're good Sometimes. They're not good Sometimes.
Speaker 2:With trainers who are stacked back to back to back, there is no time for learning. There is no time for business development. In some cases, there is no time for family. There is no time for significant other, so the whole thing is a little out of whack and it's like, ok, let's get back down to what really matters. What do you need to do on a daily basis to be moving in the right direction? Let's talk about that. And if we talk about that, that's, james, clear again.
Speaker 1:It's just then our behavior is going to change and our actions are going to align with where we're actually trying to go. Yeah, oh, that's like a the Nick Saban, you know he he's like focus on the process, focus on the process. And uh, when he coaches, you know, coach for Alabama, they didn't. I allegedly, allegedly this is one of his um things they don't talk about wins and losses, they just talk about the process, trust the process. What's our process, you know? So I love that, I love the whole, your whole view on this. And you know the million dollar question, which I'm I'm sure you get this all the time. Why kettlebells? Why are you going to kind of create this programming and certification around this one tool?
Speaker 2:So this is what I would tell you is. This is a multi-layered question. Let me answer the first part first. It's not just kettlebells. So the certification started.
Speaker 2:I have a big knowledge base in kettlebell training. I was introduced to it at a point in my life when I was extremely strong, so I just focused on powerlifting for a long time ego lifting, we'll call it and I got introduced to a mentor His name is Darius Gilbert and during the pandemic he asked me to move to Alexandria, virginia, and train as athletes with him. And so I did that and the first day I got there he handed me a jump rope and said jump rope on one foot Couldn't do it. And then, you know, I had gained some proficiency in kettlebells. At that point, like you know, I had gone through strong first one. Two, you know, was gaining traction. That's why I'd already been enlightened on okay, you're strong, where's your conditioning? Can you apply strength in different contexts, etc. But then I had been exposed to plyometrics and then sprinting, and then I started to realize like, oh, human performance is like a very big picture, and so I don't get tied to just the kettlebell meaning like in my programs, if you've done them, you're going to see the trap bar. You're going to see barbells in some concept. You're going to see body weight. You're going to see dumbbells. You're going to see the kettlebell.
Speaker 2:Then we get to the question OK, but why is the kettlebell present in every program all year round? And it comes down to a few things. So when you ask yourself, what tool do you want to use in your programs, you need to answer these questions. It's all about consistency. So if you picked a tool and the person did it three times a week for a year, six months, they're going to get results, because strength is a skill. Like playing a piano is a skill. If you practice piano three times a week for six months, you're going to have a result. Same thing in the gym. It's like if you practice this, you're going to have a result.
Speaker 2:Now, if you decide, one week you're going to learn piano. The next week you're going to learn finger painting. The next week you're going to learn rat climbing. The next week you're going to learn piano. The next week you're going to learn finger painting. The next week you're going to learn rat climbing. The next week you're going to learn golf. You're going to be pretty shitty at a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:So I find that the kettlebell allows people to train consistently because you can recover from it. You can practice a lot of skills repeatedly and get good at it, um, whereas, like when you put the barbell under somebody that isn't ready for that level of stress, it's hard for them to recover from it. They're sore for a good amount of time. Anybody that trains with barbells knows when you train with barbells, you need to eat for barbells, you need to sleep for barbells and you need to recover and you need a certain level of mental psych meaning. Like, if I'm going to the gym and I know on the piece of paper it's three by eight at fucking 80, it's like you can't go into that workout and mail it in.
Speaker 2:Kettlebell gives you so much more versatility, dude. We could do anything on a daily basis and get better. Where I need to be in the right mindset, the right recovery, to use a barbell, which means that barbells are good for a certain segment of people but not good for others. The other thing is that if you train general population, people who are sat in a chair all fucking day long, the integrity that they need to be under that barbell they ain't got. Yeah. So the kettlebell allows me to unlock, joint, the ball and socket joints, the hips, the upper back, and you get mobility every time you touch one, because of the way that it's weighted and because of how we use it. So mobility comes for free. You'll never see me do an hour mobility session in addition to my training. Why? Because it's every in everything. So that's one piece. The other piece is that kettlebells are accessible and you can use them anywhere, including your home, and what I've learned as a coach is what. What gets done with me pales in comparison to what gets done without me.
Speaker 2:So as soon as I start working with a client, tony, I'm thinking about how can I get some kettlebells in this person's house so they can start to train without me and start to demonstrate mastery, so that when they walk into a gym, people come and ask them to train that, and that happens frequently. It's like I trade. You have a 50 year old woman, monica her name. She's a gangster. She'll walk into a gym. People will go up to ask monica, hey, are you a trainer? What do you think boosts a client's ego more than that? So accessibility, and this helps you as a coach from the financial and business side of things. Because, like dude, I could. I could charge 200 an hour in the most well-equipped facility in the world. Or I could train a soccer player in on a back soccer field with two kettle bells and charge 200 an hour. It's the same thing because I can demonstrate my mastery as a coach with less.
Speaker 2:So that's why kettlebells, um, and I think the last thing I would put a bow on it with is don't get tied to your methods so much that you're really rigid and dogmatic against other approaches too. Because the reality is like if you train somebody with kettlebells long enough and they build that integrity at some point, the kettlebell deadlift is not as good as the trap bar deadlift. When you have the strength to now get into a trap bar and actually move some loads if we're talking about payload moved over time. So that's when enter the trap bar, enter the front squat, enter the bench, press these kinds of things at some point it is the right move. It's just up to you to figure out when that time is and, uh, be okay with experimenting, be okay, but don't experiment too fucking much. You know what I mean. Like you've got to have the shit there for long enough and I feel like myself included it's easy for us to get bored.
Speaker 2:It's like fuck, do I really want to watch this person do the same exercises for the next six to eight weeks in a row? So we change up the movement prep, we change up the conditioning, maybe we change up some of prep, we change up the conditioning, maybe we change up some of the dynamic warmup so it feels new. But it's important that the bedrocks in that strength portion stay similar. So sometimes coaches will be like I'm bored, maybe the client's bored, oh, I want to keep the client entertained, so we're going to change it up now and they never really get the mastery you know, so you. So that's important.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of Kevin Alko. He's a sports psychologist and he's worked with like a bunch of different championship teams and things like that. He's like he has this phrase like see a little, you see a lot, you see a lot, you see nothing. Right, you know those concepts are there and you can vary a little bit, but really just honing down and and getting really good and be be fantastic at the basics. Good and be fantastic at the basics I think that's one thing that people don't realize is super important. Everybody wants flashy, especially. You mentioned, like, some of those examples of the barbell.
Speaker 1:For me, as, like, I coach adults, but I mainly for my job. I'm in the high school weight room, so those kids want to get under the barbell and I am like no, as like, let's see you do a bodyweight squat, a wall squat right, an overhead squat, a goblet squat. Then maybe when we get that goblet squat looking really good and we have those concepts, then we're going to go front squat right or zombie squat, researcher squat, and then, and only then, we will go back squat. I think like that is for our kids, like, especially younger. They see the Instagram, they see everything and they want to get right into it.
Speaker 1:But I love the kettlebell too, because I can do so many more things. I can do a racked front squat. I could do goblet squat. I could do a single arm rack squat. You know things like that and those competencies that they learn. It's easier for them to transition. But yeah, for in kind of talking about this, of like youth athletes and athletes in general, you know you work with different people. You work with athletes, you work with general pop. You know what's, what's the approach when you're training those specific types of groups. Is it kind of set differently or is this like, hey, everybody's going to be doing the same thing, just changing numbers around?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good question. So I just accepted a job, this sweatshirt. The hall is Campbell hall. It's a school um in the area and we were brought in to. They don't have a strength conditioning program. We were bought, we were brought in to build it out for all the teams, all the kids, and these kids have never strength trained in their entire life.
Speaker 2:And in the interview all anybody wants to talk about is sports specific training. So if you don't know what that is out there, that is basically like you have a volleyball player, so what are you going to do to make it volleyball specific? And most people don't realize how dumb of a fucking question that is If you've never trained. I'm looking at you as somebody who needs foundational basics and to really gain the competencies like you're talking about with your athletes and specific things to build foundational strength. Why are kids getting hurt at a higher clip than ever before? Well, because they don't have S&C and they're specializing in one sport and they have so much repetitive motion that their bodies can't handle it and then something happens. So I just wanted to put that out there to give you a context for what I'm about to say. In regards to general pop, regular athletes, youth athletes. So if you understand this concept that if you have a body you're an athlete, that's Bill Bowerman, ceo of Nike. Basically, you understand that what I mean by this and let me explain it to you. So we know.
Speaker 2:Let's look at LeBron James for a second 22 years in the league. He's 40 years old. He's the high end of how much of a lifespan will be spent as an athlete and a competitive athlete. So we got to understand competitive athlete means you're training to play in a game. Adult athlete means you're training to play life right. So LeBron James, he's going to be a competitive athlete for, let's say, 40 out of let's call it 85 is the lifespan we're comparing to. So about 50% of his life. The average pro plays three or four years. So let's say that puts them at age 25 and they're out. So now we're talking about I don't know a third of their life. You know what I'm saying? A little less than a third.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about a high school player who doesn't go in. Let's talk about a collegiate player. So they stop playing when they're like 21. So now it's a fourth year life. High school player, 18 years. So only three to four percent of kids are going to go play division one. Maybe you know it's higher for division two, three, etc. But most kids are going to stop in high school. That's 18 years out of 85 fucking years, right? So my approach is always a sustainable approach um and let's. And then you have the people who don't play competitive sports at all. They're just training for life, right? So my approach is this for the the most part, I don't care if you're a competitive athlete or not. The most of your life is going to spend not in competition.
Speaker 2:So early on as a kid, we need to just install basic patterns. You know, you can look at whatever research. It's about 14 years old when you're. You know, we start loading kids before 14. They can do anything they want to do. They can be carrying shit, doing gymnastics, they can do some basic level lifts, like some deadlifts, whatever. We're not like focused on loading the shit out of them, but we're allowing them to explore with movement and just like it. You know, do some stuff. That window from like 14 to, let's say, 18 in the high school weight room. It's kind of the same thing Establishing foundations, getting them going, understanding it.
Speaker 2:Okay, we start to progress. It gets more intense when they get towards competition. And if their career ends there, nothing changes. Dude, the game just went from on the field to life. We still need the same qualities competencies. Maybe the intensity changes a little bit, but I think about every person as the same. What qualities do we need for life? Those are the same qualities we need for sport.
Speaker 2:So these, these teams at campbell hall who have never trained in their life, bro, I'm looking at them the same way I look at a 50 year old executive or 50 year old desk worker who's like yeah, I haven't been training. The mindset is the same. Okay, let's establish the foundations, let's get you going, let's start to get you on a program. We'll add intensity over time, et cetera. But I think it's a lot simpler than people want to give it credit for, because people want to complicate it. And who are the people that want to complicate it? The people who got something to sell and and that's the kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So, just to wrap it up in a bow, there's competitive athletes, there's adult athletes, competitive athletes. For the most part, the approach is going to be the same, unless they get to that window where it's like okay, like, we're going to start to step the gas on this a little bit and we're going to start to push it, because that's when the hormones are right, that's when the development's right. We're not going to overdo it. For the adult athlete it's really like you have special qualities. You need to develop power, speed, strength, mobility, conditioning. We're just going to slowly build those over time so those buckets get nice and large and a nice, well-rounded approach and that's what I find keeps people resilient, not injured, and coming back for more.
Speaker 1:I wish I can like put a megaphone on you right now just to tell all the parents in the world because I'm in education, I see it that their kids are playing the same sport all year round. They're not developing, um, they're. They're having tons of acute injuries. The pd department just jokes around about like how many high school kids do we see walking around in those, uh, medical boots? It's crazy. I remember me being in high school. Very rarely would I see somebody in a boot. It was like a freak thing. Now it's like every day somebody's in the elevator with crutches and a medical boot.
Speaker 1:But yeah, just the basics and foundations of getting strong and building armor and resilience should be the forefront of what we deem as like for athletes. I think that's that we start there. And then, you know, I see all the time kids give me like, hey, my one coach wants me to do power cleans. I'm like have you ever even done that? No, they're like that's one of the metrics we need. I go. You know I talked to coaches. I'm like do you really care if they could do a power clean? Well, you know, that's a baseball programming from this university. I go, do you care about the power clean or can they play ball? He's like play ball. I'm like then we should probably take that out. You know, it's just something not to add and even going into this, and this is something I'm interested to get your take on, is the olympic lifts with kettlebells right? You know what are some of those pros and cons of introducing Olympic lifts with the kettlebell and there's, is there any drawback versus? You know, you know, teaching the technique with the barbell.
Speaker 2:So in order to like, go down this, this rabbit hole which is a good one is that you have to understand why Olympic lifts have been selected. You know meaning like, why they've importance has been placed on them. And in order to understand why that is, you have to understand the force velocity curve, which is like, okay, we're going to lift heavier weights, but when I move those heavier weights for the listener out there, imagine you're doing a deadlift that's like a three RM and you're fighting against it and it's going slow on the way up and then you do it. It's so slow that it's not directly transferable to the actual sport. Now it's going to build the armor, it's going to build the foundation. It's good, it's not bad. You need it.
Speaker 2:Olympic lifts are halfway between a heavy deadlift and let's call it, like I don't know a tuck jump. You know tuck jump is body weight explosive. No load, that's on one side. Heavy deadlift is here, so this is moving fast, it's moving slow. Olympic lifts are in the middle, where they're loaded, but the load's moving fast. So that's why they got put in there, which is like we need to bridge the gap between traditional lifts and what actually happens on the field, which is body weight explosive. You know this, tony, but it's good for the listener to understand. That's why there's an importance placed on it. Ok, what are the pros of the Olympic lifts? The pros are they do just that. It's good to understand how to explode on load right and move it quickly. The cons are if you look at somebody who's a skilled Olympic weightlifter, it takes years to pick up that skill. So what's the problem with that? Well, if you look at how Mike Boyle does it, those kids start Olympic lifting at like 12. So they got two, three, four years of experience by the time they get into that high school arena where they can do that, and then they're going to obviously be fine at that in college. But for the most part kids have no exposure to Olympic lifts with the bar. They have no foundational strength to use in the first place. So now we're asking them to do an explosive lift when they can't even do a slow lift. And that's where it's not helpful. It's just, it's just like borderline, not helpful. Now here's another uh layer to that onion.
Speaker 2:So at some point coaches started to go like al vermeal was on this train when he was with the bulls was like well, let's deconstruct the Olympic lift. What is an Olympic lift, right? Well, it's basically just like a loaded jump with triple extension and then a quarter squat. So what if I just did loaded trap bar jumps or loaded jumps, do I get the same stimulus that I get in the Olympic lift? And they started to find out. Yeah, I not only get the same stimulus, but in some cases I get a better stimulus and I don't need such skill acquisition to do it. So that's where the bifurcation comes on the opinion on Olympic lifts. It's like if I can do it and get that same middle of the road force, velocity, curve kind of speed with different means that I don't need to teach for so long, then I'll just do that. And other guys are like fuck, that, that's bullshit.
Speaker 2:We've been doing Olympic lifts for this long and everybody at the high level, colleges and professionals do Olympic lifts or not everybody, but a good amount. So when I started working with Darius, I started watching him do Olympic lifts with kettlebells and we'd see, you know, girls, age 11, gymnasts. We put two kettlebells on the ground. We say, hey, clean these up to the rack. They didn't need any time to learn this shit. It was like boom, dead clean, stand up on top of them, explode up. They could do that. We're like, ok, well, now we get a stimulus that we're looking for and we do loaded jumps as well, and we do plyometrics and we do heavy lifts and we just hit that whole curve.
Speaker 2:Takes very little time to teach a kettlebell Olympic lift. That's what we dive into in our seminar. Here's the Olympic lifts, here's how you coach them, here's how you execute them. But I think in the future people are going to be much less rigid, because it does come down to what you said, tony do you want to be good on the field or do you want good lifts in the weight room? Because we know that the kids that have the best lifts in the weight room don't necessarily have the best skills on the field. Some do, some don't. So is it because of the Olympic lifts? I would argue it's probably because of their ability and then the totality of the program, before it is just the olympic lift. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, and to me it's also that that risk and reward. You know, I know a lot of uh coaches that have gone to like collegiate straight. They're like they work at a uh, you know as a strength training coach and if they get like the head job or something, one of the first things that they talk about is like we take away the overhead snatch right away, like I'm pulling that out of the program because I need to keep them safe, I want them to get stronger, faster, all that stuff. But he goes what's the what's the cost? Cost of the risk versus reward here? Like I don't care if they can overhead like snatch, it just doesn't seem very safe.
Speaker 1:Uh, there is the learning curve. It takes a lot of time, but getting into what the kettlebells like you're saying the time right Is big Cause. You have athletes. They have 60 minutes maybe with you after the warmup, after whatever, you're probably going down to 45 minutes in a session you got to it's your one teacher with maybe possibly anywhere to 20 to 25 kids in a room or athletes in a room. Time is very valuable and if you can teach them very quickly and keep them safe, I think that that is such a big reward and, you said earlier, some people are just really focused on like those Olympic lifts, because with the barbell, because they see it on Instagram, and the strength training rooms and these colleges and whatever. But I also see some you know hype videos of, like football teams and they're doing, you know, hang cleans and power cleans and yeah, they got it up to the rack. It didn't look good. I'm like, if your goal is to get it from here to here, yeah, you did it.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't look safe. So here's my last thought it's a great point you're making. It's always about risk, reward. Not sometimes 100% of the time. It's about risk versus reward.
Speaker 2:And when I go to write this program for Campbell hall, yeah, we're doing kettlebell, olympic lifts, goblet cleans to start with. Um, that's the Olympic lift and everybody can do a goblet clean. I've never seen somebody. You know, obviously it may take some people a little bit longer, but we can do a goblet clean in one session. And ultimately, here's where it does change though, in my opinion, and where I could be swayed.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned football players. In football there's a huge level of dynamic stability you need when you're about to get hit and you have to tense up against. I don't think snatches should be in any weight room. To be honest with you, like that would never come to, like I could do a kettlebell or a dumbbell snatch and get that way easier. But there's something about, I think, in that population if you have to meet 225 pounds in the rack like bro, you got to get stiff pretty quick and understand how to like be there. But when those kids do it, like again, I think this is a young development thing.
Speaker 2:When I saw a presentation from Travis mash, head coach USA weightlifting, like he is a whole system for how he's teaching the Olympic lifts. So who's teaching it? How are they teaching? It really matters. If it's football, I might consider, like we talked about okay, we established the foundation, we did some kettlebell Olympic lifting, I taught them how to at least Olympic lift and then I might put it in the program at some point and just start to teach it. Not super heavy loaded, uh, in the beginning, but other sports dude, like, yeah, like it would be. It would be hard for me to to come to the other side of like. Ok, how does this risk? How does the reward tip above the risk? And I think a clean in football you could convince me. Ok, you want to get stiff, you want to really produce some force, and those kids are usually bigger by the. So that that's all I would say.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, absolutely. And then speed work and jumping, right, you kind of touched base earlier, uh, talking about this. You know, with um, I have a strong first background. Um, I know you're RKC as well, right, as well as Strong First, yeah, and you don't see that much talk or in the programming or in our certifications of, like, speed and jumping, and you can maybe tap into sports as well. You know, because some coaches are like we don't do a lot of jumping or speed work because they do that in their practice, do you think that you should continue to keep, uh, jumping and speed work in the training room?
Speaker 2:yeah, this is another really good question, so I'm gonna talk some shit to start. Strong, we're not created to be holistically uh, expansive training frameworks. They were made be how can I have as many of these certifications as humanly possible and teach the simplest amount of shit that people come in, they know that's what they're getting and they go out. It's the six fundamental kettlebell movements and then a few others in level two and you know SFL is literally what four lifts, and so it's just really the skill to the strength piece. And they omit all of the other stuff because it's harder to teach. And guess what? People only train the shit that are good at. Nobody's good at bouncing and jumping if they've never practiced it before. Right, when I first started to jump and bounce I sucked so bad at it, bro, I couldn't jump on one foot. With that jump rope got made fun of by the kids, went home every day for six weeks and made that a skill, and what I would tell you is that.
Speaker 2:The second part of the question is that coaches say they do it in practice. No, they don't. Look at the data. Look at GPS data of top speeds in practices. Most kids practice at about 70%, with little exposures to a fast break here or there, but they don't actually sprint at a hundred percent. And that's why and what happens to distance, or sorry, sprint speed, over the course of a season? Because they're tired as fuck and most coaches abuse them and condition the hell out of them, like my coaches growing up. Not only does the season go on, conditioning stays high because we're going to teach a mental toughness, right, and then they're tired and their speeds are down. So for athletes specifically, I think they need to sprint twice a week in different exposures. And, by the way, speed is a different multifactorial skill. So acceleration is one thing, forward Top speed is one thing, but also lateral shuffling is another, hip turns another, back pedaling is another. So Lee Taft talks about there's seven fundamental movement patterns right Outside of just the six in the weight room, the seven are jumping up, jumping out, hip turning, lateral shuffle, backpedaling, and there's like two more. So I can sprinkle those in. They're not getting drilled that they're doing it, but how do you know how well they're actually escaping or attacking space if they've never been coached? So that's one thing.
Speaker 2:My guess is, most of your listeners, though, coach general population and general population people never get exposed to speed and power. And why is that problematic? Well, I'll tell you why. As you age, your conduction velocity, or how fast your brain talks to your muscles, goes down and your power and speed drop dramatically. Your strength and your muscle size drop, but not even close to half as much as your power, your power and your speed if you don't train it.
Speaker 2:And I think about walking and sprinting on the same continuum, right? So if I'm a general population person, sprinting is the highest level, walking is the lowest level. But they require the same qualities. Bro, you got to have single leg strength. You got to have thoracic rotation. You got to be able to get off the ground. You got to have some elastics. There's several other things that you need to have to do. Both of those things, jogging is here, running fast is here. So if you don't have those, the other day I was backing out of my driveway and as I'm coming out of my driveway, my rear view, about 30 yards behind me, I see this old couple in a puddle on the ground.
Speaker 2:I stopped the car. I jump out the car. I run, run about 30 yards behind me to this woman and man, helped them off the ground. I stopped the car, I jump out the car. I run about 30 yards behind me to this woman and man, helped them off the ground. Woman's got blood coming down her face. She's all banged up. They couldn't get off the ground. So that was a crazy moment. Called the EMTs, got 911 there. They're fine, which makes it okay to talk about.
Speaker 2:But the reality is for aging adults, if you don't have resilience to a lot of different things, you're in danger, because life is not this cushy thing Like you got to have some strength behind you to do that.
Speaker 2:So why do we train power and speed with adults? Does it look the same? Are they doing tuck jumps and you know single leg hops and you know high level Olympic lifts? No, but they may do jumping jacks, do a jump off of a chair. So sit on a chair, jump up in the air and then relax and come back down. Their feet may not leave the ground if they're 70 years old, but they'll still move fast. So we just sprinkle that stuff in because we know that these qualities you need for a lifetime and we know that we just want to dose them appropriately. Athletes get more power and speed. Regular adults get less. But we don't just subtract it because, like, nobody else is doing that. But look at the scoreboard, tony. Most adults are not hitting physical activity guidelines, uh, are out of shape, overweight, and, yeah, the scoreboard speaks for itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know we got what was it? 70 over 70% of the people that are going into armed services, um, or attempting to, can't pass just the basic physical test. And you mentioned some good things in there, man, some good things Like one again, I'm getting some of this information. This was from like Instagram, but whatever, like I saw it and I saw like people doing it. They were asking their grandparents or people who are older hey, can you skip, just skip. And they're like, yeah, I, I could skip. And then they would try to go. They're like shit, I lost the ability to skip. Like you, that's a possibility, you know.
Speaker 1:And then also, talking about speed in different ways, like everybody thinks, speed is like 10 flies. We're 10 flies, 10 flies, 10 flies. But shuffling, opening up the hips. Also, I love getting kids to sprint on a curve because you might have somebody who's super fast, right, but if you're talking athletics, right, it's not always going to be a straightaway. So I have some kids that will sprint like super fast, straight, but try to get them to sprint on a curve. It takes some work for them, you know. They need that. So, but looking at speed and making sure that those things are spirited, they need. They need that. So, but looking at speed and and making sure that those things are sprinkled, I am a hundred percent ingredients with you. I think it needs to be not just set to that. You do it in practice, so therefore we can neglect it. Um, but yeah, all good stuff.
Speaker 2:And uh, the next question is that, for the person out there this is what happens to general people is they hear the word athlete and if they don't have confidence in themselves and they don't view themselves as athletic, they get intimidated. And in most gyms I don't see people doing a skips or jumping of any kind. Everybody's on the same shit. Bro and Tony, it's not just 60, 70 year old people Can you skip? I got 30-year-old coaches who can't skip when they come into the program. So if that's the case, so much time is going towards strength. But the gym is a construct. We created, bro, to move in one pattern. It's not fast, it's not chaotic, but your life is chaotic. And then you wonder why people go play pickleball. Injury rates are through the roof. Why? Because you've got to decelerate, You've got to change directions, You've got to run, You've got to come back, You've got to have dexterity. Nobody trains that Like. Traditional gym training is not going to give you full preparation for that activity 100% agree.
Speaker 1:You're taking all this knowledge, you're going through and you got clients and groups and now you want to start and you have started this KBCU. What was kind of the reason of the why you think that this program or the certification need to be kind of out there?
Speaker 2:So my journey in this industry was hard, tony, and I think, after working with, like you know, close to 500 coaches, now I understand that my experience is theirs. And why is the experience hard? There's so much information out there so you don't know which way to turn right, left or sideways. There's always a new four hour fucking podcast coming out like that that is just going to fill your head with shit that you can't even really use. Like that, that is just going to fill your head with shit that you can't even really use and you're going to be like what do I do with this? So the first thing is that what helped me, unlocked my career, was going to seminars almost every other weekend and meeting great professionals and learning where they were learning from and then learning that information. So the first thing behind KBCU is I cut out all the bullshit we get right granular about. Here's the training framework. Here's how you become a better coach. Here's how you program. Here's how you coach. Here's how you execute information delivered with no bullshit. Number two I would not have made it if I didn't have deep social connections, community. But the problem is, as a mercenary coach, when you go out on your own or if you're in a gym with not great people around you, you don't have that community, you don't have the people to ask questions to, you don't have deep support and you feel kind of lonely on this hard road. So the second piece is community, which we've done better than anybody else, which means I've gone to plenty of seminars. You talk to two or three people there who are in your group the whole time. You don't know anybody else there. Once you leave the seminar, poof, it disappears. Ours is community all the time. So it's like you come, you meet everybody and then when you leave, you have that entire community and more to talk, to, reflect with, get information from and be in this journey together with. So that's number two and number three. People just watch how I go about it, because I embody what I'm trying to coach. Who I am online, who I am in a cohort, is who I am on a daily basis. I've crafted my processes in line with my passion and where I want to go.
Speaker 2:So exposing coaches to what I would call greatness in this profession. What does greatness look like? Well, greatness looks like waking up early. Greatness looks like reflection. Greatness looks like preparation. Greatness looks like learning something every day and seeking that out. Greatness looks like focusing your entire world to become better at your craft. So they watch how I do it and a lot of them are great in their own right when they come in. Right, really great people, smart. And we just go, ok, you want to be a great coach, here's what it takes. So, ok, you want to be a great coach, here's what it takes. And so they get to model that in our time together. And it's dude, it's the love of my life outside of my wife, dude. So you know, I love everything about it.
Speaker 2:And it came up because I was learning so much. And then people started to call on me as the teacher and I started to realize I had a skill set to teach. And then I realized how many holes there are in the current teaching system out there. You cannot learn shit in two days. So if you go to a two-day seminar, what are you going to get in two days? You're going to get the pieces, but the learning comes in. Do you practice that for three months after? Our certification is 16 weeks, dude. So if I have you for 16 weeks, four, what's gonna? What's gonna give you more development for 16 weeks or two days, you know. So the the two-day seminar is a great inspiration starter. You'll see where we're coming from. We'll give you a lot of tools to go practice. But we plugged all the holes, you know, and we make it such a great learning experience and that's why people have great results. Like you know Eric, you know Nate, they were at another seminar. I'm shocked because they're pursuing greatness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like you're also like it's just making, it's just like. It's like basically a blueprint, right, a pretty easy blueprint to follow, versus, as I'm coming up, I went to university, I got my, you know, bachelor's, master's, I got just basic, you know certifications, but I was left with just my own devices, you know it's. That's pretty cool that you guys have this network of people and have a blueprint and also have people to lean on, which, like you said, is not the case as much, because you guys do you guys meet with the cohorts, right Kind of deal. And you guys do you guys meet with the cohorts right kind of deal. And you guys do like workouts together, like, even if it's virtual the experience that we've created online um doesn't exist elsewhere.
Speaker 2:The reason we created it is because I am really rabid about anything I do in my life. Is it actually producing? I don't want my name on something like an online program. I just came through an online program. We would meet. There's like 200 people in the room. You get your fucking assignments Like no, I'm good on that.
Speaker 2:We bring 20 people in and we go okay, once a week you're going to train as a group together. I'm going to lead it. Once a week. There's a lecture on everything we just went through and so you can ask questions. And then, biweekly, you're going to meet with your squad meeting, so everybody is on their own squad. I have team leaders who I've trained and I've coached to be your point of contact so you can always ask questions, send feedback for videos et cetera, and people can't wrap their head around.
Speaker 2:How is online as good as in person? I'm like, cause you haven't seen how we do online? It's better than in person because you wouldn't be able to get me 16 weeks twice a week, or anybody for that matter, to pick their brain for that many contact hours. If you're in a two day, bro, you really got like two hours a day of full mental acuity. The rest you're tired as shit and you're just trying to hold on for dear life to get as much as you can out of it. So I would tell you, we've crafted the experience. So it gives three different types of learners and experience every week. I'm a kinesthetic learner. I have to learn by doing, feeling, failing, changing. Then you have some people who are auditory learners, who need to listen and hear it and get it explained. Then you have visual learners who need it shown to them in either tables, graphs et cetera, and we have all of those every week. So that's how it kind of happened. I didn't plan for it that way, but now I realize that's why it works that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll definitely be putting some of the you know, those uh certifications in the show notes so people can check it out. What's uh, what's upcoming next, you know what are some things you're looking forward to I'm looking forward to hanging out with you and you taking me around chicago.
Speaker 2:Um, we're right now. We're in the middle of a 16 week certification. We're in week five. New York sold out. That's in March, march 22, 23. Bringing it back to where I came up at Reload, and then Camp Savage 500 acre property three days long, that's in Arkansas in May. And then we turn around. We go to Chicago Seattle is later in the year and then Newport Beach, california is later in the year. So and then we have another 16 week opening after the summer. So that we got to. We got a jam packed year, but this is all I do every day, so I love it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome dude. But yeah, man, I appreciate you coming on and chopping it up and talking bells.
Speaker 2:And yeah, man, it's good to like kind of connect this way too, and I'm looking forward for you to come out to Chicago as well that if you're a coach, you need to bring yourself back to the main thing, which we talked about earlier, which is, like I am so grateful and lucky every day to wake up and impact people's lives in a positive way. And there's always going to be options and there's always going to be things swirling in your head Should I do this? Should I do that? Oh my God, I'm not meeting this timeline. Is this working, Et cetera. That's part of the job.
Speaker 2:Everybody goes through it, right? But if you can bring yourself back to what your purpose and your passion is and just set up your days so you are becoming the best possible at that, over time it's going to come exactly how it's supposed to come for you. But if you're stuck in a place of burnout or fear or contemplation of getting out of the game, it's not going to happen. You got to have fun with it, dude. So you got to figure out how to make everyday fun, everyday fulfilling in some way, and know that there's going to be hard ones every day. Fulfilling in some way, and know that there's going to be hard ones, you know but that's kind of how I look at it.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't know how to follow that up. That was really good. Appreciate you, hunter. Thanks for coming on. You know I wish you the best and again thanks for everybody listening to another episode of the Primal Foundations podcast.