I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine who is a personal trainer. He saw me in the gym while I was doing my own workout consisting of single arm jerks with a 74lbs. kettlebell.

We talked about kettlebells and he made the point that he felt kettlebells were limited in terms of options for progressions, since they come in 8 kg increments. Particularly, the options for increasing the load is limited.

He asked me how I would progress with kettlebell exercises and I suggested the following options:

• Increase the volume of the same exercise.
• Increase the density of the same exercise (more reps per unit of time).
• Increase the speed of an exercise.
• Decrease the speed of an exercise.
• Use a harder variation of the same movement pattern.

I finished off the conversation by saying that I agreed with him on the limits of the kettlebell and that I have rarely used it for training the athletes I work with.

Then he asked me the central question:

“Why do you use it yourself, when you don’t use it with your athletes?”

“I like kettlebells and my personal goals are to become better at certain kettlebell lifts”, I said.

I did not find that kettlebells supported the goals of my athletes - hence, I did not incorporate kettlebell training into my athletes programmes, even though I personally like to train with kettlebells.

One of the most important lessons for a coach is to not be emotionally attached to ANY exercise. If you are emotionally attached to an exercise, you tend to give athletes the exercises you like yourself – and they may not necessarily be the exercises that support the athletes' goals.

Always analyse the needs of your client/athlete and provide him/her with the right exercise at the rigth time.

I am sure you already know a bunch of exercises yourself, but have you ever felt that your programs could be more effective?

Have you ever felt the desire for something new in your training?
 
Personally, I experience those feelings constantly. I am always looking for ways to make the training programmes more effective. "The Magificent 35 - Vigorous Variations of Classical Exercise" is a result of my desire for more.

Are you interested in seeing some of the exercises that I have developed?

If yes, click on this link.  It contains a free excerpt of my book "The Magnificent 35" - Vigorous Variations of Classical Exercises.

Move With Passion,
Karsten Jensen