Did you know that besides kettlebells, a pull up bar, the occasional “evil wheel”, battling ropes, and some fun things from my friends at StrongerGrip.com, my training arsenal also includes something surprising—a video camera.
This is a tip I picked up on waaay back in the days of VHS and Hi-8. Videotape yourself performing whatever movement or exercise you’re trying to troubleshoot. This is especially useful for people training remotely or independently. If something just doesn’t “feel right” I found that my simple little Canon camera ($150 last month at Office Depot) has a slow mo playback feature is ridiculously useful! Laurel Blackburn and I used this to A-B compare taming the arc with 16kg kettlebell snatches. It’s also incredibly useful for any other ballistic exercise – because let’s face it – you can’t always see what’s going on and more times than not, a mirror is just a bad bad bad idea. Who really wants 7 years of bad luck. Also, as I recommended to someone who came to me for RKC prep work, bring along your camera when you train with someone. Ask permission of course – but you can leave with a great training tool and all the cues you may have missed while thinking about 9,000 other cues in the mean time.
Anyway If you were wondering what I was doing in the early 1990s that required videotaped training sessions, it was learning to conduct a marching band. Which I can still do. If someone has a run-away marching band that needs landing, I can step up to the plate and at least help end it with some modicum of grace. Might not be pretty, but no one will get hurt. But I digress.
The video camera can really help you fine tune your Get Up – I find that even intermediate to advanced kettlebell enthusiasts sometimes aren’t aware of what parts of their body are doing during the multi-focused Get Up. “What?! What do you mean I moved my hand OMG?! How did it get back there?” is a common occurrence. ESPECIALLY when maybe someone has moved up in weight a little early. Remember, “It’s all easy until it’s heavy” and, “Lift a heavy weight like it’s light and a light weight like it’s heavy, Comrade!”
Something fun to do sometimes is to lift my 32kg kettlebell and try make it look as if it were made of solid…. STYROFOAM. The goal is to have the bystander believe that there’s no way the kettlebell could possibly weight 70 odd lbs considering the control and ease with which it was lifted. I once did this in a gym, carrying a 24kg and 2 12kg kettlebells to the other side of a room. After wandering off to get some water, I noticed a guy try and lift the 24kg – he hadn’t considered that the kettlebell was solid iron, and told me later that he assumed it was mostly plastic. Imagine his surprise when he wasn’t able to pick it up so nonchalantly. The video camera can be a great tool towards working towards this. But absolutely positively video your get up—what you are doing and what you think you are doing may be two drastically different things—or maybe not. Find out! If you’re proud, post it on youtube – there need to be more great Get Ups out there on the internet.
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