Kettlebell Training Pro Tips

Join Jeremiah Waylon and Roger Parks as they explore the importance of context, flexibility, and curiosity in kettlebell training and life. This episode offers practical pro tips to enhance your training mindset and technique.

 takeaways

Always consider context before making training decisions.

Be flexible with your goals to adapt to your current state.

Curiosity accelerates learning and reduces frustration.

Avoid negative self-talk and tantrums during training.

Focus on process and intention to improve technique.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Kettlebell Corner

01:01 The Importance of Context in Fitness

07:28 Setting Goals and Understanding Context

12:55 Flexibility in Goals and Training

18:28 The Importance of Proper Technique

22:18 Self-Criticism and Learning

27:50 Curiosity and Motivation in Training

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Kettlebell Corner, where strength meets theory, where we take you on a deeper dive into all things kettlebells. I'm Jeremiah Whalen and he's Roger Parks. And we got some pro tips for you today. Ain't that right, Roger? Get in, loser. We got some pro tips for you. Isn't that what your church says? That's kind of what it says. Close enough. Um we but we better get some pros on here. That's right. Pros versus hoes. You know what I'm saying? Or pros before hoes. I don't know. Yeah, that's the saying. There's derailing quickly this time. We've already been canceled twice. Well, hey, there's a lot of people. Yeah, that's good. You know, we're flipping the script on them. All right. So today we wanted to talk about some important things that we feel if you just use, you'll probably be better at kettlebells and life. Right? Maybe both. Right?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Okay. Definitely both.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

All right. Well, I think the first one is only fitting. And of course, Roger, this is one of your number one pro tips, and that is context. So context. It's not just a book you read in school.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Well, so so context is a word. It's not exactly a pro tip.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Oh. Well, that's what's the pro tip around context then? Straighten us out here, pal.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Consider context first. There's the we were just talking about this idea that there are no stupid questions. There are stupid questions. There are a lot of stupid questions. In fact, most questions are stupid. Oh. And the reason why most questions are stupid. The reason why most questions are stupid is because they don't consider context first. The con context is what is surrounding this thing. So you've been, you know, a coach for a long time, and I'm sure you've been asked questions, and most of these questions come at you what's what should I do? What's better? What's best? Um, should I do this before that? Sometimes, sometimes they're reasonable. Um, often they are not. And why they get frustrating to me is because I have clients, as do you, who are very good at life. And when you were to ask them a question, you ask an accountant, an attorney, a doctor, um, people who are professionals, because usually they are, who can afford us, and they give us these fantastic answers. And well, you know, it's they sound like like me. Well, that depends. So they start, they start, you know, talking about the context, the the situation in which something um is or is not true, or the well, if if we're going to find best, then we need to set this up within particular parameters. Best for what? If I'm asking a client, what's the best investment? Like that's a stupid question, right? You you don't you don't ask questions like that. You ask, hey, I am this this many years old, I have this much money, I can afford to invest this much of it. This is what I want done from it or with it. What should I do next? Uh, what research do I need to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's all about context. So the reason why these questions are dumb, and I'll stop ranting about this in a moment, is because these questions come from people who are very competent in regular life, but they don't extend that to the fitness questions they ask. So they look at the world in a very binary way. Is it this or is it this? Is it this or is it this? And it it doesn't work that way. When you're considering anything, in addition to let's say, your program, the oh, I I saw this, you know, I saw this article about this thing. Should I add this exercise? Well, I don't know. Can you do it? I don't know, I've never tried it. Well, try it first. Let's see if you can do it, and then let's see if you like it. Oh, did you try the exercise? Yeah. Well, do you like it? No, I hate it. Should I do it? No, you shouldn't do it. Like, don't, don't throw stuff in there you hate, because we both know you're not going to do it. Anyway, these are these are all context questions. I saw um an article, I think it was in the New York Times, a client brought in for me. And the article said the headline was basically, forget about muscle mass, it's all about strength. And this is the a very good example of why context matters. I don't know who wrote this article, but in general, just so people know, people who write for newspapers and magazines almost never have a fitness or wellness background. They're people who, you know, they see themselves as foreign war correspondents and then they can't get a job and they end up at the, you know, on the fitness desk. And they half-ass readness desk. They half-ass read a research paper, and then they go and interview people who are scarcely qualified, and they put together this hodgepodge of an article that has a sensational um has a sensational headline, and it's usually nonsense. So studies show. This one didn't even cite a study, which is fascinating. You had some guy who I think teaches exercise science or physiology or something. It's like, okay, cool. Like you're you're not completely unqualified, but the the point of the article was to abandon muscle mass, which you shouldn't do. And he didn't say a reason why you shouldn't do that. But then you need to focus on your strength and you need to lower your reps, which is true in a conventional sense. But I mean, you you know some of my clients are in their 70s and 80s. So if I tell some of my 80-year-olds, hey, we're doing uh we're doing a five by five and we're gonna load you up, you know, we need to go 85% of your max, that's not gonna go well. That's context that's missing. So the whole piece was missing context. It didn't, it didn't say, you know, for example, muscle mass is good. You should you should have as much of it as possible, but you should also have strength if you need to choose, choose this over this in this particular situation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Always context. Always figure out what are the what are the conditions that I'm operating under. Even when you're choosing an exercise, swings, how many swings should I do? I don't know. What do you how many swings can you do? Well, I've only ever done two. Well, you should probably do two until you could do three. Yeah. Right? One at a time. Right. And then, you know, when you're, oh, I've been doing, you know, five sets of ten. Okay, now you're getting a little volume. I'm or I'm doing about a hundred to a hundred and fifty swings per workout. Then we can we can move the needle. Okay. What are you trying to accomplish? You you need to think about context before you you ask a lot of the questions that you're asking, because a lot of a lot of the the coaching that I do is a two-step thing. The first is to is to hear the stupid question. And the second part is to turn it into a good question and and then answer that. Right. The the the first two the first two steps in that sequence should really just be one. Like, hey, I read about this exercise. Would this be right for me and my goals right now? Good question. That's a good question. Yeah. And so we're we're starting to think, we're starting to think about um about context. And that's always something we want to do. Uh, because without it, you don't have definitive, you don't have definitive answers. And even then, they can be difficult. And and I tell whoever whoever will listen to me, beware of people who have very straightforward, easy answers, because usually they're either lying or they're wrong. Or regurgitating.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah. Well then, and these people that let's let's take said clients that are are regularly high achieving and can give you, you know, in-depth answers in their field of choice and whatnots, but come in maybe not understanding how to ask the right fitness question. What are some things? Is it just based all on goals? Is that how you then determine the context of the question you make? Or how can they can you provide a path for them to help build out their context development skills, so to speak?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Everything, everything is going to be goal-oriented. We've we've discussed this before. The difference, you know, working out, it's moving. It's it's exercise. It doesn't necessarily have a goal beyond being healthy. So that's it's a sort of a goal, even there. But training narrows the scope. So if you're in front of a trainer, if you're seeking coaching or advice, you should presuppose a goal. Now, it's perfectly fine. And some of the brightest clients I've ever had have said, Hey, I should be doing this exercise thing, I think, but I don't know what my goals are. I don't want anything right now that I'm aware of. Can you help me figure out what it is that I want? And and this is the idea of knowing what you don't know and knowing that you don't know it. So, yes, it should be goal directed. What is it that you're after? And then figuring out, okay, what are the what are the variables, what are the levers is, you know, one of the things I talk about, or buttons, whatever silly thing that, you know, uh a mechanism to make this thing more likely to happen. So if I have decided, for example, so step one would be identify a goal. It should be a physical goal or a mental goal that can be achieved by physical means. And then you can talk about what are the different things you can do to manipulate that thing. So if you tell me I want to get stronger, now I'm gonna, I now need to have some, I now need to dig and I need to figure out, okay, there are two parts of this. Okay. There's uh, well, really three. There's the I, there's a desire, and then there's stronger. Well, stronger means stronger than what? Stronger than what? Well, so in what is the context in which I currently function? Am I am I old? Am I young? Do I have a training background? Do I have an injury that I'm trying to train around? Have I picked up weights before ever? These are all the things that I need to know. So they're, you know, the the that's that's where the process evolves. If if I if I'm a bad coach, a bad trainer, and I have a one size fits all answer, then I'm going to tell a 94-year-old who's never weight trained before that they need to get out there and do a five by five. And we need to do our heavy compound lifts like deadlifts and bench press. And our sprint warm-ups. Don't forget those. So I love those. I love all of those things, but that's not going to be what I recommend for that person. And I also know that doing sets of 15 to 25 for a completely untrained 90-year-old is strength work. So we, we, you know, the the sets and reps, the load, all of that stuff is going to matter based on the current context. So figure out what your goals are. Figure out what you want. And once you figure out what you want, then you can figure out how close you are to that thing. If you want to be stronger or you want to be leaner, or you want to be faster, and you have an athletic background, then you can start to say, okay, this is what I want. This is where I am. And then you can start looking about, you know, looking at how do I get those things. But you you have to look at the lens, and those are probably the two most important things is what is my goal and where am I oriented toward that goal? Because from that everything else is going to flow. If, you know, if I want to put some weight on my deadlift, right? I want to train heavier, then I have to consider, well, where am I? What am I doing right now? Right now I'm in kind of this weird little move around recovery phase. Don't have a very, very specific goal by design. It's where it's where I want to be. I'm enjoying movement, I'm exploring some things, um, working on some, we'll call them minor imbalances. And for me to go back into, you know, doing heavy training, um, it's it's not gonna take much, but I would probably, I wouldn't go right by, I wouldn't go right to a five by five. I don't need to do that because I haven't really done much, I haven't done much deadlifting lately. So maybe I'd start at like uh a six by six or a few sets of eight, just start getting some some reps in and and see, you know, where my body is relative to that, and then everything's gonna flow from there. But the point is figure out what your goal is and figure where you are, figure out where you are relevant or relative to that goal. And then you can start asking those questions and you can start, you know, laying the foundation. And and it's really easy, especially with things like AI. It doesn't give you great answers, but it gives you better answers than Google. And frankly, it gives you better answers than a lot of brand new trainers. So you can say, I want this. This is who I am. Or even better, if you have you've learned how to um you've learned how to work with AI a little bit, have AI interview you. Yeah. I want this thing. What are the questions that you need to ask me in order to figure out the right way for me to get there? And often it will answer you, it will ask you some really, really solid questions, just like a trainer might. So those are those are the two things you need to think about. And then once you have that in hand, then you can you can go and do your research. You can ask your, you can ask your questions. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

All right, that's good. And actually, one of the things that you sort of uh touched on in that uh context explanation is one of my pro tips. And I think, you know, it's good to know you're going through it as well as um is the willingness to be flexible. And I don't mean like stretching out or whatever, but to be flexible between your goals. So maybe you set out to have a goal of achieving, let's say, a press of a 48 kilo, but you found yourself not motivated to go do that. And so then all of a sudden you're you need some sort of novel stimulus to re-engage you. So it's okay to table the goal, go find a way to just maybe move or work on imbalances, or maybe take what you've learned from training for that 48 kilo goal, and then, you know, fixing what lies in the gap, if you can recognize that, or ask the questions to the right person to recognize that and be okay that that goal can still be there, but you may need to shift your goal for where you're at in your life right now, especially if it's something where you're finding yourself either running up against a constant injury, or if you are not motivated to go down and do your training the way you would thought you were wanting to do that training. Because there's been plenty of times uh in my life where I've like, oh yeah, I want to do this. And then as I start the training process, realize I actually don't want to do that. So instead of not training, I accept that it's not something that I'm jiving with right now. So I'm gonna be flexible and I'm gonna either try something new or try something where it's a little more uh, I guess a little less structured per se. And that's sort of the beauty part about the kettlebell is that there you can do a lot with a little. You can say, okay, well, I'm gonna work on complexes a bunch, and I'm just gonna do some strength endurance, or uh, I'm gonna do something like simple and sinister for a month and just kind of get my groove back and just put some things on autopilot if that's where you're at, you know, sort of that sort of thing. And that's you know, I think that's something that a lot of people can use to help keep their progress going in a in a meaningful way. And then then you'll be able to even develop more context for the questions that you have, you know. That's that's one of my pro tips. So be flexible on your goals. I mean be flexible in your goals. You know, I mean, you guess you could be stretchy if you want to.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

For I don't know if that's really a thing anymore, but you know, I I think there are two things that you you pointed out both, but I want to make explicit with that, which I I agree with. I think that's uh I think that is important. The first is motivation and the the way a lot of people consider or people think about motivation. They they seem to think that motivation is this feeling of wanting to do something. And I guess I guess it is in a certain sense. Right. But for me, uh you know, having done this for a long time and seeing what works and what doesn't, the I don't remember where I got this, it was not mine, but the the idea of motivation is is not the wanting to do something, but it is the reason you do something even when you don't want to do it. If you know you you've got a kid who likes eating human food and you're attached to. So in spite of all of my suggestions to leave him somewhere, you refuse and you seem intent on continuing to feed him. So when you don't have money to feed him, and you need to go out and do something to get money to feed him, even though you don't want to, you do it anyway. Yeah. That is motivation. I need to feed this child. I don't want to go do the things, but I'm gonna do it anyway, because that that's motivation. When you are going down to your training, you're doing your pressing, and you're finding more often than not, I don't want to do this, and you don't do it, that's you're not motivated. If you were motivated, you would do it anyway. Truth. And and that's that's something that just stares you right in the face. If if you keep setting yourself up to do a thing, but you don't do the thing, you don't really want to do that thing that much. You might want the thing, but you don't want to do do the work to get the thing. It's not worth it to you. Right. Um, the second thing is, you know, you you also mentioned parallel tracks. And sometimes you might have a goal that let's say you do have a press goal. I talked about, you know, hypothetical goal of doing a a heavier deadlift. Both of those things could benefit by more muscle. What if rather than focusing on the direct goal of lifting a heavy thing, you decided to go and be a meathead for a bit. You decided to put on some muscle. Will muscle mass help you lift heavy things? Usually. Most of the pros, most of the people who are really, really good at this, all say the same things. They don't say, hey, work out like a bodybuilder forever. And they do not say that bodybuilding is the best way to get strong because it's absolutely not. But they will say, if you're having a hard time getting into this, then maybe go put on a little bit of muscle, which you can use towards your goal. Maybe that will kind of re-engage you and motivate you, and you're not grinding up against this thing you're not really motivated to do in the first place. Maybe at the end of, you know, a six, eight-week cycle and you're looking, you know, a little more huge and you've gotten in the habit of training regularly, maybe you'll start to flip some of your repetition ranges from, you know, something that's more appropriate for muscle gain to something that's more appropriate for um strength. Or you can do what, you know, they call power building, where you you it's kind of a hybrid of the two. So either way, you can you can do something that is parallel. Um, sometimes for me, what works best for me when uh I am having a hard time with something is I just throw everything out the window and I just move. I don't have expectations, I just do it. But either way, that's uh that's another thing entirely.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And his choice is ballet, so it's it's a glorious thing to watch, but you know, it's his form of movement. Um another uh another pro tip, and I like how you phrase this, and you'll have to uh elaborate on it, is to remain fully seated until the ride comes to a complete stop. Now, that's really usually pretty good for a lot of moving things. So, how is that applicable to our kettlebell life, Roger? Not just the roller coaster or the car driving down the freeway.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

So that is uh for those of you who have been to um amusement parks, when you're in a roller coaster, there's usually a sign. And it's uh it's it's it's it's placed in an interesting in an interesting location. Sometimes you'll even get the recording. Sometimes it's in a place where you wouldn't have seen it until you already violated the rule.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Until your arms are hanging out of the thing. Keep your arms inside, son of a bitch.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

It tells you please remain seated until the ride comes to a complete stop. The ride I'm thinking about is ballistics in this case. And what I mean specifically is the um putting the bell back down, let's say after a set of swings. And I've seen this tons and tons and tons of times. Um that's an exaggeration, especially if a ton represents 2,000. But anyway. Um give me the exact ton number, please.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

2,448 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

So if someone's done a uh set of swings. And um they finish their last one. What I will often see is it'll come back into the backswing and then they will let the bell come forward and their hips will come forward with the bell. So everything including the spine yanks forward. Not a great idea. Um, when when you have done this enough times, yeah, you can you can get away with it. It's still not a good idea. On that last swing, whatever, whatever ballistic it is, but on that last swing in this scenario, keep your hip, your hips back, keep your butt back. Remain seated. Keep your butt back where it is and let the bell separate from you. Let it come forward while your spine is still safe behind your feet, while your weight is still in your heels, and let the bell come forward to a safe rest on the ground and then begin to stand up rather than you know already starting to stand up when you're not even finished, you know, the bell's not even on the ground. It is a it is such a small thing, but I've seen it, you know, uh simple uh a handful of times. Hey, I'm getting this weird back pain. My I think my form's okay. Yeah, I watch your form, your form's great. Well, what's what's the problem? It's the it's the last rep, dum dum. So see it all the way through. Just sit back, finish the swing, keep the butt back in the back swing, let the arms come forward, let the bell, let the bell land on the floor, and then stand up. It is a it is a very, very simple thing.

unknown 23:36

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Simple as it gets. Okay. Keep that, keep that there. All right, we got time for one more, and I like this one um better than my uh creative vision board. Um, which really I mean just use your video. You know, that's important. You think you're doing something, uh, but when you watch it, trust me, you're probably doing something else. And this can carry over to whatever skill set you're developing. And uh, but that's not the one. The one, Roger, and you mentioned this to me yesterday, and I really like this one. It's uh the the shake of the head, the the the self you know degradation. Did I say that right? Uh, but that but well and degradation. Degradation, yes, thank you. Well, you know what I mean, and that's the beauty part about talking with me. Uh we can conversate about this all day. And I know that's not a word either. But let's let's let's not get down on ourselves here. But but um to explain why that's so important to not do these sort of things, especially when it comes to learning a new technical skill like a kettlebell snatch or even the clean or whatever it might be. Uh elaborate on that for us.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

The the mean the main reason comes from from motor learning. And this is my rough understanding. I'm not an expert in this, but I know a bit about it, and I've been using these these concepts for a while. And I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that shows which clients learn well and which do not. And the ones that are the most fiercely self-critical, the ones that can't abide not being perfect at something right away, the the ones that have uh temper tantrums, these are the ones that learn the slowest and the hardest. When you make a mistake, your brain lights up. There's a there's a, you know, usually there's kind of a binary idea of is this uh I see it a lot with snatch training. Is this a snatch? Is this not a snatch? And people will do a rep, they'll know it's not right, and before the bell's even on the ground, which violates the last pro tip, they're shaking their head and they're beating themselves up. And it's like, what are you doing? Okay, you you you're you're well let me get let me let me finish this and let me then go berate these people. Okay. Um, but your your brain lights stick around, everybody. So so something, so something bad happens or you don't do it right, and your brain's like, oh, well, let me pay attention to what the right way is. And you're not giving the brain good input. You're just shaking your head and throwing a temper tantrum. All you're doing is say, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm not good at this. So here's this window where your brain is open for feedback. And rather than thinking, hmm, well, what did I do right? Now, if you've ever spent a room, uh a moment in a room with me, you know I'm not perky or peppy. You know I'm not interested in in preserving your feelings. I'm not interested in lying to you. And, you know, when my clients say, that was pretty bad, like, yeah, that was pretty bad. Um, but there's also an acceptance of like, of course it's bad. It's supposed to be bad. Let's figure it out and, you know, move forward. If you can't figure out, you know, we're not, we're not deluding ourselves, but let's say your snatch is 20% better than it was. It's not there, but it's 20% better, which is a good improvement. But your brain doesn't get any of that improvement. All it knows is that you failed and you suck. So throwing your, your fits and shaking your heads and, you know, having your temper tantrums misses out on this opportunity to learn. It misses out on your ability to focus and even enjoy the process of being a beginner. And I'm not saying, you know, frustration is not a real thing. Sometimes it's good to just step away and um, you know, it's good to step away and have a moment and come back to it, maybe even another training day entirely. But if you're shaking your head and you're having this, this, this tantrum, this negative affirmation, um, you're not helping yourself. And further, like, what's wrong with you? Why, why do you think you deserve to be better at something? You've got to try, you you have to work hard. And there's some things we're naturally gonna be good at, some things we're not. But there's a certain sense of entitlement. I'm entitled to be good at this thing. And guess what? You are not. You're not entitled to anything. If you want it, if you're properly motivated, see, I'm tying all these together. Um, if you're if you're properly motivated, you're gonna work on it and you're going to figure it out. And it is what it is. So just deal with whatever you've got going in the moment. Pay attention to what's happening. Rather than shaking your head and saying, um, snatch bad, think about, okay, what went right? Did I feel my legs more? Did I not feel my legs more? Okay, what is the last, say you're doing a set, what is the last moment when things felt good? And then you can go back to that. Now you have something to build on. But you can't focus if you're shaking your head throwing your tantrums. So stop it.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah, stop that. And, you know, we we're sort of in this like real weird time in life. And I think a lot of people can fall into this trap, is where you're like, I should have this done now. I should have already known how to do this. Everything should happen right away, but it's not gonna be that way. And so uh just to add to that, a pro tip with the pro tip, it's like a pro tip with uh what do they call that, a sidecar when you get those Cadillac margaritas or whatever. It's been a while. Whatever on top. Um, but this is um you can bring an intention into the session or or your practice or whatever it's gonna be. So just like Roger said, if you are like finding that you are struggling to find something to focus on other than the mistake you may have made at the very end or wherever you made it, if you go in there with the intention of, I'm gonna make sure that my arm is connected to my body at two specific points when I drive in my legs and when I receive the bell back. And that's what I'm gonna focus on. Maybe something goes wonky along the way, maybe your arc's really hard out there. Let's just say in a snatch that we're talking about, fine. But you can you can rest on the fact that you know you you work that intention. And then you can bring more awareness to the other stuff. And then perhaps the next session or the next set, you redefine your intention. And that helps simplify it to where you're not just looking at the overall, oh, snatch bad, like Roger said, you know? And then yeah, and then you should be better at life with that and kettlebells, like I promised at the beginning. See what I did there, Roger? Yeah, I see that. You carry all this over. So it's a wild, wild time. But I think that's uh I think that's all I got for pro tips. You got anything else?

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Oh, just a a little more on this one is Oh, okay. You know, the the the idea of curiosity. Sometimes people will take into I I I just listened to um someone talking about this with anxiety. And it was a a therapist was talking about this idea when he works with anxiety patients. They don't want to let go of the anxiety because it they think it helps them perform. It's motivating. It it's not motivating, it's sapping, it's draining. You uh that doesn't mean you can't be anxious because you will be anxious if you care about stuff. It it means that there's it's not a it's not a useful thing. It doesn't mean that you know you you don't you don't feel it, but focusing on it and holding on to it and protecting it as though it's the thing that's going to drive you is is silly. And I think often people who fall into this, the the a lot of these people are high achievers. Um I will say anecdotally, they are the absolute slowest to learn. The people with the best natures who are willing to laugh at themselves, the ones who are curious, they learn fastest. And I I cannot think of a single exception there. But they want to hold on to this frustration as though that's gonna fuel them. Like, oh, I'm not gonna stop until I get this. Like, really? David Goggins are some wild. Yeah, like go go take a break, go have a sandwich. Like it's it's it's a snatch. Like a snatch. It'll it'll be here when you get back. So, you know, the the the idea is, especially with kettlebells, is this is this is something that that's very personal to me, which is the main reason I got into kettlebells, and I've talked about this before. The main reason I got into kettlebells was because I had such bad coaching from people who allegedly knew. And they they said horribly stupid things, and they told me to ignore the fact that I was very uncomfortable. And they, you know, they basically said all of their nonsense louder as though that was gonna fix the problem. Like it just, it was it was thing after thing after thing. Uh, it really made me not like them. And kettlebells would hurt my body. So it's like, oh, I'm not gonna use these things. But when you decided you wanted to get a certification, I was like, all right, fine, I'm a good friend, I'm gonna support you. I learned to reframe the the pain and and, you know, like, okay, well, how about I figure out a way to not be in pain? Let me not, you know, let me figure this out rather than go to these bad coaches and let me get curious. And in the process of getting curious and learning about kettlebells, and yes, there were some frustrations, but in the process of getting curious, we got in shape, we got a lot stronger, and we had fun doing it. You know, we were we were doing free class, was it four or five a.m. We tried it's like Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I think it just depended on who was joining.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

It was like 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning. We were doing it free because we were we were curious for years. We wanted to learn, right? So we took that that spirit of curiosity into kettlebells and and really enjoyed them. And, you know, now I know how to use them without hurting myself. And it was it wasn't until I I started approaching it with with curiosity that that really that that really happened. So, you know, I I didn't I I'd been working out a long time. I'd been a trainer for a long time, and I think there was an expectation that I had of, well, why can't I figure out this modality? And some of it was because it is taught poorly and the things that you were taught are correct are not correct. But I think also part of it was that I didn't come into it with a good, a good spirit. I didn't come into it with curiosity. I came into it with an expectation that I should be good at it. And when I did that, I was not. And when I let go of that and I just got out there, enjoyed, you know, the the sun coming up after a kettlebell class in the park. And I I learned a little something every time. That's when I started really getting good at this stuff. And that's when I realized the real transformational value.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

True that. True that. Uh also on that same point, there's a a pretty good book out there that I've uh look, if you don't like to read, this is an excellent audio book. It's called The Inner Game of Tennis. Just remove the word tennis and insert said word kettlebell and or golf or pickleball or running or computer coding. Well, maybe not the computer coding. I'll go a little bit deeper than to into some of the things that we've even talked about here today regarding that curiosity that that lowering the expectation that you should be something just because you think you could or you can't, you know. So that's a good book. Check it out, Roger. Yes, sir. It's on the Libby app. Ooh, that's a good idea. It'll be it'll be a wait list, though. It'll it's a wait list.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Don't tell people about that. Don't tell people about Libby.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

They don't know about that. People are only trying to do the library. They'd rather do scroll, Roger. In fact, you're probably gonna scroll off this video shortly. And if you do, you better go get that Libby app and read yourself something. Anyways, or more importantly, download the Bells app from the Apple App Store where you get seven days for free. Try it. Do some workouts that we created. And you can even just buy some a la carte too. They're cheap, there's expensive, there's programs, there's all this stuff. Anything else? No. All right, like and subscribe, y'all. You know the drill. Stay strong.