What do we gain from the relentless practice of a few primal exercises (lifting heavy things off the ground and over our head many times)?Besides the obvious strength, endurance, resiliency, and technique?
I've already mentioned the mental skill from months and months and thousands of reps: the mental "groove" to move efficiently and effortlessly. Also comes the discipline to relax, de-stress, endure pain, and not waste your energy with overstated and un-needed tension. The practice and ability to relax under a load and breathe has several other surprising benefits that I will will expand on later.
We also gain better body awareness from those correctly performed thousands of reps. Our brains and nerves learn about force generation, speed, gravity, momentum, acceleration, leverage, joint angles and ranges, and timing, all from practicing the basics. We also learn how our body moves through space with all those forces and variables affecting us and the weights we are holding.
My favorite move is the jerk. If I do a few hundred perfect jerks, I will gain enough body- and spatial-awareness to easily perform a heavy windmill, side press, get-up, or half tweaked spinning bottoms-up jumping one-legged bent push press. I will not waste my time practicing those unless I am being paid to perform them. And I am still gaining a deeper understanding of the basics, the backbone, of my sport, making me a better athlete.
Sadly, this staple of the kettlebell sport and fitness arsenal, the jerk, has fallen by the wayside in America until recently. I think it does not fit the doctrine of exaggerated tension and bodybuilding-type philosophies of the hard-style movement. Fortunately a few open-minded trainers from this group are discovering its value with a little commitment. They are stumbling onto training ideas that resemble those of AKC/WKC. It has to be practiced to realize the potential gains.
Jerks are to kettlebells as scales are to music. Like I said before, the mental gains of sport kettlebell lifting and training have some very unexpected benefits that carry over to "unrelated" areas of life. I will expand later. Remember, "make it look easy" by practice and imitating the masters, and anyone can be on the road to mastery.
Antoni Stojak is not a Pleb!
11 years ago
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2 comments:
Nice Post. If enough of us keep saying it then maybe folks will start to understand. My athleticism dramatically increased with dedicated Jerk work over the last year, and in fact it helped my snatches as well.
Right on the money about making it look easy. I've told folks that Valery makes it look so smooth that it often hurts our cause. I'm amazed at folks (trainers and former athletes) that mistake this as efficiency for the sake of efficiency (Like anyone could do it if they chose to be efficient) and not an astounding display of athleticism.
CI
CI
Tim, I don't want to hijack this discussion, but I don't know how to contact you otherwise. My question relates to jumproping which you've recommended to me in the past. I moved into a great Edwardian house with high ceilings; I can now jumprope. But I suck at it. But undaunted, I intend to jump some rope after my jerk and snatch training in order to burn off some of the excess girth which I have. Here's my idea: I am going to set my timer for fifteen minutes and just keep at it. I may have to re-start 1000 times (literally) but I am going to keep moving and hopefully I'll get better over time. This is the methodology I've been using with the LCCJ. I just get through the ten minutes with as many switches as needed. Over time I switch less and eventually I shall do it with no illegal switches. Hopefully I can tame the jumprope similarly.
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