Now, all this time later, the time has come. I have completed my last certification as a SRKC and have been promoted to Master RKC instructor. I am so incredibly grateful for the honor and privilege of representing Pavel, Dragondoor and the RKC system in this capacity.

 I want to congratulate my good friends and colleagues on their promotions as well:

Geoff Neupert, Master RKC Instructor

Jeff O’Connor, Master RKC instructor

 From the Dragon Door website: Master RKCs are appointed after extensive experience as a Senior RKC and after demonstrating the highest levels of integrity, commitment, teaching skills, leadership and personal physical ability. Master RKCs are the only RKCs with the authority to teach Dragon Door approved RKC certification workshops on their own. Dragon Door now offers in-house RKC certifications for appropriate organizations. Write to John Du Cane at jducane@dragondoor.com for more information

 Zar Horton, Senior RKC instructor

Dan John, Senior RKC instructor

Peter Lakatos, Senior RKC instructor

Tom Phillips, Senior RKC instructor

 RKC Team Leaders-

Andrea Chang

Kiera Newton

Delaine Ross

Dustin Rippetoe

Phil Scarito

Jason Marshall

Tommy Blom

Lauren Brooks

Robert Budd

Betsy Collie

Ron Farrington

Steve Freides

Dennis Frisch

Gabriella Katschthaler

Ricardo Nieves, MD

Philip Ross

Jordan Vezina

HARDSTYLE!

Legitimate BADASS Strength

You see, you need someone to teach, lead and coach you. Someone who has experience and success doing what you want to do, achieving the thing you want to achieve. For example when I chose to learn to lift and teach ketlebells, it was obvious that Pavel and the RKC were the way go.  Why? It is the source from which ALL the other kettlebell stuff you see on the market today comes.

When I decided I wanted to lever a sledgehammer, I asked Dennis Rogers, who learned the feat from Slim the Hammerman.  To try to figure it out by yourself is making things harder than they need to be which is a clear violation of my Rule Number One: Don’t Be Stupid.

To act like you invented it yourself is not only stupid, but arrogant.

The Legacy Continues

On the Nashville Kettlebell Blog this week I talked about how if you aim at nothing and you’ll hit it. Similarly if you follow a fool don’t be surprised if there is a less than desirable outcome. Follow the advice of a fool and what do you have? Foolish advice.

Find the best teacher you can find, learn all you can and practice with focused intent.  Honor your teacher by taking what you learned beyond where you recieved  it, and earn the right to call it your own.

 Let’s review some examples of the foundational drill, the SWING, shall we?

He comes close, but he doesn’t understand the purpose of the swing, which it project energy forward, not up. For  projecting energy upward, we have the snatch.

Why it’s wrong: Incomplete hip and knee extenstion. Kettlebell swings too high and causes the shoulder to elevate and go into a compromised position. Neck juts forward to couter the momentum.  This is dangerous for the shoulder and spine.

 WRONG. Epic. Monumental. Collossal. Super. FAIL. I don’t even know how to respond to this kind of stupidity.  I can only take comfort in knowing that if shee keeps tis up she’ll injure herself so badly that she won’t be able to demonstrate this kind of idiocy.

The RIGHT way. My student Gina is BETTER at swinging a kettlebell than Jillian Michaels  from Biggest Loser and she doesn’t even have her own video.

If you want to injure yourself, please feel free to participate in  this madness. If you want to learn to swing correctly (safely and effectively) seek instruction from a current RKC instructor.

I met Marcus Martinez in person for the first time in San Jose a couple of weeks ago.  He has put together a funny and informative video above about what he calls the “Running Conspiracy”.

I’ll be at Marcus’ place in a couple of weeks for the Hardstyle Kettlebell Certification. There are still some open spots, I hope to see you there!

As a part of the faculty of this School of Strength, I have a question for you:

What do YOU want to know?  About Kettlebells? About HARDSTYLE? About the RKC? About Power to the People? About stretching and moblity? About strength in general? Moving better?  Fat loss? About what sets the RKC and Pavel apart from all the imitators and wannabees?

Post in the comments below, email me, ask on facebook, whatever you want, but I wanna know YOUR questions so that we can all continue to grow.