Rock Solid: Kettlebells Provide Superior Benefits for Endurance Sports
Editor’s Note: This article was originally printed in Endurance Magazine. I’m posting it here so it can be a permanent resource. The magazine didn’t pay me for the article, so I don’t think they will mind. 
I hope your triathlon season is progressing nicely. If you have a topic or a question involving beginning triathlons or beginning kettlebells, please don’t hesitate to contact me at brett@triathlonjones.com.
Rock Solid: Kettlebells Provide Superior Benefits for Endurance Sports
By Brett Cornwright
For the typical time-stretched endurance athlete, strength training usually occurs in the off-season, if at all. Workouts often involve a heavy dose of machines and isolated movements with free weights. During the racing season, and if the athlete is really motivated, he or she may get to the gym once or twice per week in an attempt to maintain what strength they managed to build over the winter.
There is an alternative to this mundane and ineffective routine, however, that is guaranteed to change your outlook on strength training. It is called a kettlebell, and it resembles a cannonball with a handle. Kettlebells are made of cast-iron and come in a variety of different weights, from 10 pounds (4 kilograms) to 106 pounds (48 kg).
As many professional triathletes, runners, and cyclists are discovering, including the king of cutting-edge, Lance Armstrong, there simply is no better strength and conditioning tool for your entire body.
“Kettlebells are unique from any other form of fitness equipment in a multitude of ways,” said Betsy Collie, owner and head trainer at Rapid Results Fitness in Durham. Collie is a Level II Russian Kettlebell Instructor (RKC II) and a Z-health Level I movement coach. “Kettlebells train the entire body at one time through full body movements. Unlike traditional gym equipment that focuses on isolating the body’s parts or performing cardio on stationery equipment, the kettlebell enhances the performance of all life’s activities.”
As you know, our body’s movements require more than one muscle to perform. They work in conjunction with one another, not in isolation. When you stick with machines and bodybuilding exercises, you are usually targeting one body part. With kettlebells, your entire body, including the core and the posterior chain, are effectively engaged.
“Due to the bell sitting below the handle instead of between it, the kettlebell’s weight is off-set in the hand, causing the body to use more muscles to hold and move the bell,” Collie said. “This causes the body to use more energy, which is convenient if one of your goals is to lose weight. Conversely, if one of your goals is trying to build strength, the kettlebell will literally force your body to use more muscles than performing similar exercises with barbells and dumbbells.”
Almost all kettlebell exercises begin with the hips, as this is where the power is generated in all sports, especially swimming, cycling and running. After training with kettlebells, swimmers find that their cores become much stronger, thus they have more power in the water. Cyclists find that their wattage outputs increase, despite no increase in volume or intensity on the bike. Runners often find that their posture and form is better, they have more spring in their legs, and their core, on which everything hinges, does not break down in the latter stages of a race.
“The reason kettlebell training translates to improved sports specific training is because of how kettlebell training works with your body,” Collie said. “It produces amazing results in all areas of sports specific training no matter what the sport. For example, in running the core gives out almost sooner than the legs and heart do. The kettlebell forces you to work your core on every set and every rep.”
Over time, many age group triathletes will develop overuse injuries from all of those miles. Because they have full-time jobs, families, and the stresses of the daily grind, protecting and building their bodies via strength training often falls by the wayside. Luckily, kettlebell workouts typically last 20 to 30 minutes, and your heart will be pumping the entire time. Thus, an athlete’s VO2 Max numbers can also improve with intense kettlebell work.
“The kettlebell can enhance any athlete for any sport,” said Tim Anderson, RKC II Instructor and Z-health III movement. Anderson is the co-owner of Outstanding Personal Training in Fuquay-Varina. “Endurance athletes can particularly benefit from kettlebells because of the tremendous cardiovascular training a kettlebell provides. Training with kettlebells can increase your VO2 Max, or your body’s ability to use oxygen. Kettlebells are also easy on the joints. They can save an endurance athlete’s joints from a lot of wear and tear.”
Many endurance athletes also might avoid lifting weights for fear of building too much muscle and becoming bulky. Kettlebells, however, are great for building a lean and athletically muscular body. They are also excellent at building strength endurance, which is something that is vital for all endurance athletes. Many are powerful on the bike or the run for the race’s opening miles. Maintaining that power throughout the race is where kettlebell training comes into play.
As far as preventing or treating injuries, kettlebell training cannot be beaten. Common injuries, like lower back pain, shoulder problems, plantar fasciitis, and tight hip flexors from sitting at a desk all day, are all effectively rehabilitated with kettlebells.
“Training properly with kettlebells can help prevent injuries,” Anderson said. “Kettlebells can be used to strengthen the whole body as well as correct asymmetries in strength and movement. Kettlebells are an amazing tool when it comes to preparing the body for performance and reducing the risk for injuries, but only when used properly with good form.”
And once again, all of these benefits to your core, your conditioning, and the strength in your legs and upper body, can be had in as little as 20 minutes three times per week.
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Brett Cornwright is a freelance writer and marketing consultant. He is a two-time Ironman, and achieved a personal best of 11:06 at Ironman Florida in November. He writes a blog for beginner triathletes at http://www.triathlonjones.com/.You can also follow him at http://www.twitter.com/brettcornwright.
Article on Benefits of Kettlebell Training for Triathletes
I don’t think this has hit the streets in print yet, but below is a link to an article that I wrote for Endurance Magazine. Check it out. I’m telling you, if you are a triathlete and you do any strength training, make it kettlebells.
You will thank me later. Increased power on the bike, increased power in the water, increased core strength for a speedier, more powerful stride on the run. Kettlebells also rehabilitate old injuries and prevent new ones. I’m not sure what else you could ask for! Drop the bodybuilding exercises for something that really gets results. OK, enough preaching. See what you think:
Rock Solid: Kettlebells Provide Superior Benefits for Endurance Sports
Besty doing a perfect turkish get-up.
Also, pictured is my friend Betsy Collie, RKC, who has been helping me a bit. She was also referenced in the article along with Tim Anderson, RKC, both of whom are teaching me the art of kettlebells.
For Beginner Triathletes, Bike Hard and Bike Often!
Ed. Note: This is a guest post from 10-time Ironman, 2-time NothingMan (self-supported Ironman) Sheila Plemich. You can keep up with her training exploits at http://crackheadfe.blogspot.com
I’m pretty sure someone told you that you need a bike. If you are going to do more than sprint triathlons, it should be a road bike—although a hybrid or MTB can get you through your first few sprints. If you have money to burn, go ahead and get that tricked out triathlon bike, but realize that “it’s not about the bike.”
It becomes pretty obvious that no matter what distance triathlon you choose to race, it’s important to be a good cyclist. There are several reasons:
- the stronger you are on the bike, the less painful it will be to run
- triathlons are heavily weighted towards time spent on the bike, so as long as you are going to be biking for most of the race, it makes sense to try and be good at it, right?
- biking is the part of a triathlon where you are going the fastest, and fast is fun, right?
So how do you get good at biking? Do you buy a bunch of lightweight parts for your bike or race wheels? No. Those things may improve your speed slightly, but once you have them and have used them for a bit, they won’t make you faster.
You get good at biking in two simple ways: bike a lot, and bike hard.
Obviously, if your race is going to include a 25-mile bike leg (an Olympic distance triathlon’s bike leg is 24.8 miles or 40K), then you want to be fit enough to ride 25 miles at a pretty good clip. Depending on how fast you ride, 25 miles might take you 1-1.5 hours. That’s not a long time. But you might want to actually ride further than that sometimes, so it makes the 25 miles seem easy (you’ve probably heard this concept applied to running and swimming, too!).
If you are very dedicated, you’d ride 25 miles maybe three or four times a week. Or, you might ride less than that, one to three times, and then ride longer (say, 40 miles) once a week. Three to four rides a week is usually plenty when it comes to building your bike fitness.
What about the hard part? Just as for swimming and running, you don’t always want to ride at the same pace. You need to have some sort of benchmark to measure what is easy vs. hard for you. Speed is not a good benchmark unless you live somewhere where it is flat, the same temperature and the same amount (or lack) of wind all the time, since hills, temperature and wind significantly impact speed.
Good benchmarks are heart rate and power—power being the gold standard. Most beginners don’t have power meters, so they use heart rate, or a combination of heart rate and perceived effort. Perceived effort is always a good measurement, since even if you do someday spring for the power meter, you will still want to stay in touch with your body’s overall sense of effort, especially at longer races like the half and full Ironmans.
Why do you need to ride hard sometimes? Because climbing hills requires more effort than flats, you might need to surge to pass someone (legally), and because when you ride hard, just like in running, you are working on raising your lactate threshold, meaning that if you do it often enough, you will be able to ride faster at a lower heart rate (or power output).
How often and for how long in each ride do you need to ride hard? When you are first starting out, you may only want or need to spend less than half of your total ride time going hard. You should always begin with a warm-up, and a good rule of thumb is 10-15 minutes for a short ride, 15-30 minutes for a ride of 1-2 hours, and 30-40 minutes for a ride of 2.5+ hours.
As you build up the amount of time you are able to ride hard, you will find it feels easier and easier or you are going faster and faster. This is where the heart rate monitor (or power meter) can really help you out by telling you precisely what you are doing. You should stay at a given level for a few weeks or prove your fitness at that level in a race before you try and go even harder.
What does hard really mean, though? “Very hard” would be as fast as you could go for 25 miles, as in a time trial. Hard would be not as hard as that, where it feels hard but you can maintain it for about 30-40 minutes easily. Below that you have basically moderate and easy, and when you warm up it should be easy building to moderate to prepare you for the hard stuff.
Just as for running and swimming, it can feel easier to push yourself in a group setting. Try and hook up with a local cycling club, which will probably have several levels of riders, or find some other folks you can ride with that are slightly faster than you. Ask around about where the killer hills are in your area. A good workout is to warm-up and then ride a hill or several hills in “repeats,” where you ride up very hard, and then take it easy going back down.
What do you do during the winter if you live in a place where outdoor riding would be dangerous or impossible? You purchase a bike trainer, which is a device where you attach your rear wheel to it and there is a resistance drum that the tire rubs against to simulate road conditions. There are many good trainers on the market, and if you can test ride one before you buy, that’s great, because depending on how strong you are, you might want a different type. If you ride indoors on a trainer, you will want a fan blowing on you because you will sweat a lot due to not creating your own wind.
There is discussion as to how time on the trainer equates to time on the road. Some people think that time on a trainer is “worth” more than time on the road. Forget about it. It is the same. Time is time! But it’s OK to spend less time during the winter months on the trainer than you would if you were riding outside, but make the time count by spending more time going hard than you normally would. You can watch TV, movies, footage of bike races, triathlons, whatever gets you going, and you can have your favorite music on.
You can also buy DVD’s called Spinervals that guide you through specific workouts. My philosophy is that if you put in a lot of hard time in the winter, then the transition to longer outdoor riding is easy. I build up to a 2.5-2.75 hour trainer ride, and once it warms up, I can easily ride 3-4 hours outdoors the very first time I go out. You don’t want to burn out mentally during the winter, so if you cut back your biking time, you can add more swimming or running, because winter is a good time to work on those skills.
It’s as simple as that—bike a lot, and bike hard!
Sheila looking quite aero!
Sheila embarked on triathlons in 2000, coming from a background of 10 years of strength training, two years of running, zero swimming and negligible biking. She completed her first Ironman (which in 1999 she said she would never do) in 2001 and has continued to do one or two a year, a few half Ironmans and sprints just to keep things entertaining. In the process, she has become a student of the sports and has adopted the triathlon lifestyle. You can find her on Facebook and on her blog at http://crackheadfe.blogspot.com.
Become a Slippery Swimmer In Three Months
If you are new to the sport of triathlon, chances are good that you haven’t swam since you were a kid. Chances may also be good that you have never done lap-swimming in a pool, ever. You liked the game of Marco Polo and diving for quarters better than swimming back and forth.
I would also be willing to bet that there were several of you good-spirited folks, like me back in the day, who signed up for your first triathlon at the first of the year. It was only after you hit the payment button that you thought about the swimming part. You perhaps have been to the pool and actually tried to swim the required 300 yards in the particular sprint race and then you promptly found yourself in a calamitous battle with the water that resulted in nothing but splashing and a big-time oxygen debt that is rapidly coming due.
Swimming is a Skill
Well, I’m here to tell you, you can improve your swimming and you can do it very rapidly. You see the human body was not designed to operate well in the water. It is not natural to us and most of us don’t have the natural gifts like Michael Phelps, like a 6-4 frame, gigantic feet, really big hands and long arms to make it come easy.
What you have to realize, however, is that swimming is mostly skill and even a person that appears completely out of shape on the outside can in fact swim laps around you. I’ve seen it time and again in the pool. Little kids leaving you in the dust in the time-trial start of a pool-based sprint triathlon can be particularly disconcerting.
Most experts, and everything I’ve read, would say that swimming is 70-75 percent technique and maybe 25-30 percent aerobic conditioning. Which basically means that you can be a really in shape runner or cyclist or a really good basketball player, but you can also be a really terrible swimmer. The good news is that you can “learn” to swim fast by teaching your body to move in the same optimal way each time you take a stroke.
Technique Is Key
There are many options out there for improving your swimming in a big hurry but none of them skip the first step of learning the proper technique. Going to the pool and swimming without focusing your technique is going to be worthless. It’s going to be hard and you are not going to get any better because of the effort.
After about two years and my first six triathlons (three sprints one year, then two sprints and an international distance the next), I was tired of coming out the water near the back of the pack. In fact, my first triathlon saw me have to stand up in the middle of my 300-yard swim huffing and puffing, wondering just what I had gotten myself into. That’s another story for another post.
During this “learning” phase, I had experimented with Total Immersion. I bought the book Triathlon Swimming Made Easy and started in with drills. I was not dedicated and I was not swimming much, so I never really improved. My technique was terrible and I was taking probably 30 strokes per 25 yards, wearing myself out before I could actually get any real practice in. Muscle memory is huge in swimming, and if you don’t swim, you will lose it, much like you would lose your golf swing when you haven’t played in five years.
Triathlon swim starts can be a bit disconcerting!
So, after a few false starts, I saw a sign for swimming lessons at the on-campus aquatic facility at Duke University, my former place of employment. It turns out the assistant swim coach there, Dawn Chuck, was offering lessons for like $125 per semester. The classes were to be during lunch.
For about the whole semester, I pretty much had one-on-one time with Dawn because nobody else apparently wanted a collegiate coach giving you valuable advice. Simply having someone watching you swim is going to help you a great deal, even if they are not former Olympic swimmers from Jamaica, like Dawn was.
In about two months of consistent swimming, like three or four sessions per week, she had me move from finishing my races in the back of the pack to the front 10 percent of the pack. She gave me lots of drills and she told me what I was doing wrong. She gave me shorter sets, 2000-2500 yards to work on drills, rather than a bunch of yardage swimming intervals.
Surprisingly, the comments were very few, but they were always major flaws that were easy to fix. It was as simple as that. She had my strokes-per-length reduced from about 25 to about 14-15 in about three months.
Lessons are Biggest Bang for Buck
So, if you really want to improve your swimming, probably the easiest thing you can do is hire someone for a few private lessons. If you can’t afford that, I suggest you at least find a friend who is a good swimmer and have them watch you and tell you what you are doing wrong. It can be something as simple as lowering your head in the water or finishing your stroke or setting your catch. Either way, whatever you think you are doing in the water is probably not what you are actually doing, so be sure to follow through with this.
If you would prefer to be a hero and do it all on your own, it can be done, but it will take much longer to become decent. I consider decent a 1:30 100-yards. In a future post, I will give my take on Total Immersion, which I tried, as well as some other thoughts on triathlon-specific swim training. Until next time, give your swim training some thought and decide the best way to approach improvement based on your specific schedule. If you can afford it, hire a coach. If you can’t afford that, at least ask some kind looking fish at the pool to watch you swim 100 yards. You will be surpised at how a simple suggestion will completely change everything for you!
Training Update
I am nursing a cold today but I’m hoping to make a 42 mile ride tomorrow morning. Beginning Monday, I will resume triathlon specific training once again. There are three months until the White Lake 1/2, so I need to get my butt in gear if I want to have a decent showing in my first Master’s Clydesdale race.
My friends often ask me why I don’t race in my age group. Although I wouldn’t be upset if they did away with the Clydesdale category, which is for men who are above the 200-pound Mendoza Line, since there is a category that I fit under, I’m racing in it. It’s not as simple as saying that I race in this division to win stuff. It’s true, I do like to win stuff. However, one of the big reasons I stay in this category (and I realize all of you could probably care less), is that I like to have people to race!
If I were to race in my age group, which, as of this year, is men 40-45, I would perhaps finish 10th on a good day. Top 10 would definitely be an excellent race. The top five of those guys I would likely never even see during the race. In the Clydesdales, or Master’s Clydesdales as the rules states that I now am, at least I have an idea of who’s in front of me, and who I may or may not be expecting to come knocking on the run.
In the North Carolina Triathlon Series, I’m usually one of the first out of the water for Clydes. Then, about three of them pass me on the bike. They make it easy to tell who’s who in triathlon by writing the category you are racing on your calf. If you get passed by a “C” you have just been passed by some fellow who’s north of 200 (well, he’s supposed to be anyway. I’ve seen “Clydesdales” who looked 190). Anyway, three or four of them pass me on the bike. Usually, and in fact likely if I’m having a good race, I will catch at least three of them on the run. Sometimes, I win. Other times, I will darn near kill myself trying to make it to the finish line and just as I cross, I spot some large dude standing there sipping a Diet Coke while yukking it up with his boys.
At any rate, my training begins in earnest Monday, following the 42-mile ride Sunday. Or not. My goal is to swim three times, run three times and ride three times per week. Until I can fit that in, I don’t really even need a plan. One longer ride, two harder ones. Three longish runs (two around 8 miles, one longer up to 15 or 20). Three swims with long sets focused on technique. I have a poster that is signed by one of my triathlon heroes, Gordo Byrn, where he has written “Keep it simple” and he signed it. What can I say, he made an impression on me.
I just finished swinging a 16 kg (35 pounds for the metrically challenged) kettlebell around and I feel as loose as a goose. I did the following with the 16 kg:
– 20 swings, rest 15 secs.
– 5 one-handed swings, right into 8 snatches (R&L), rest 30 secs
– Repeat 3 times
I kid you not, my heart was still pounding for awhile after I finished. My resting heart rate is 49. That workout took probably 3 minutes, tops. I cannot believe how much swinging and snatching a kettlebell works the aerobic system, or anaerobic as the case may be. Wow. Just wow. Not to mention the strength workout you are getting for your entire body, especially the core, the hamstrings, and back. My shoulders are loose, back is loose, hips are loose!
Throw some pressing in there along with a few turkish getups (see video below) and you have done more good for you self in about 6 minutes than every single soul who went to the gym this morning and pushed a pin into a Nautilus machine or slapped another plate onto the curl bar. If you have not tried kettlebells, you have got to give it a try. You will be amazed when you put it down after a set of swings and you stand up straighter.
Yoga at the YMCA
About a week ago or so, I took my very first yoga class from a friendly young woman named Michelle. We have decided to join our local YMCA (they are running a special that’s hard to pass up). I went to the class as kind of a test run to the gym on a free pass. It was very cool! I was worried that I would be crazy sore. I was not too bad the first day, then had a bit of second-day DOMS but nothing too bad! I was pretty shocked, as I took on some pretty aggressive poses. There were several hand stands and things that I could not do, but perhaps one day!
I really like the class and look forward to going to back to more. It was amazing how now my body seems to almost crave that trying to work yourself into those poses. I was also reminded of what a great core workout yoga is. My mid-section and obliques were sore, but it was a “good” sore.
My old friend Cindy has opened a yoga studio in Albemarle, N.C., which is very near my home town. It is called Albemarle Pilates and Yoga, so if you are from the area, defintely check it out. They have birkram yoga as well, which I have yet to try. I want to try that and try pilates, also something I’ve never done. You can also access her blog through her web site, so be sure to check it out.
I’m getting great core workout from my kettlebells. When people hear me talking about them or I show them a video, they think I’m nuts. I think the three people that I’ve actually gotten to try it were shocked at how “open” they felt through their hips. It stretches and rehabs, too. I hope to do some posts in the future on how I use kettlebells to compliment my triathlon training and recovery. It really is incredible how well you work your hamstrings, back, arms, hips, hip flexors, shoulders.
Here are some YouTube videos on kettlebells. Some of the movement involved, including turkish get-ups, are an incredible full-body workout in about 2 minutes. See what you think:
Swings: The king of exercises.
I will report back on the yoga and my upcoming training plans. I also have a few posts coming up that will be geared for folks who looking to enter triathlons and are wonder what to expect. I am just ramping up a little bit now, a bit of running, riding some. A group of about 15 of us braved the rain and rode 50 miles on Saturday morning. It was cold, so there were only a few brave souls out now. Big Woods and Jack Bennett, two of the local cycling friendly, or unfriendly as the case may be, roads (hills) will become easier over the next few months, thank heavens. Fifty miles was probably a bit much for my first ride in more than two months, but oh well!
Below are some before and after shots of my tri bike, a 2006 Cervelo P2SL. We were quite dirty after this one!
Dirty. Imagine our faces!
Rear view
50 miles was probably a bit much in the rain!
Yukkk!
After a quick wash.
Nice!
Cockpit!
