IOL Strength and Conditioning

The often-referenced goblet squats were invented by Dan John a to teach his student athletes how to squat well, his favorite overhead squats specifically. The thinking was the goblet groove would help the athlete learn to squat between the legs, rather than with the upper body stiff at the hips. I suspect it also works very, very well for teaching women how to squat.

You see, we have a hip thing going on. In case you didn’t know.We are, for the most part, more suited for front squats over the more common back squats, too, so you guys trying to teach your spouses to squat should take note of Coach John’s handy teaching tool.

My lagging blogger partner Byron Chandler notes:

The goblet squat is excellent for teaching you to spread your stance and “squat between your heels.” The reason you squat upright with a goblet squat is because it’s basically a front squat. You won’t be able to duplicate that upright position with a back squat. Incidentally, if you are long legged, you might be better off focusing on the front squat rather than the back squat.

Many of us took to them immediately. In fact, I use them regularly with a medicine ball as a pre-workout warm-up, working the toes to the shoulders… scratch that, higher. Gets my head in the game, too.

I usually proceed to a medicine ball clean/goblet/thruster effort as the warm-up proceeds.

Well into the warm-up, I like to get and stay down at the bottom position, hold and stretch a little. Dave doesn’t agree with this and says it looks like a warm-up to a knee problem instead. So shake a little salt into the sweetness.

As an aside: A lot of us have a noisy knee thing going on. Fred Hatfield (you know him as Dr. Squat) discusses squats and knee issues here, and for an opposing viewpoint may I quote Coach Bill Starr about noisy knees:

“If they don’t hurt, I wouldn’t be concerned. I’ve trained with quite a few lifters who experienced noise in their knees when they squatted, but it never caused them any real trouble. Naturally, if they do start hurting, it would be wise to see a doctor.”

Your foot position — the width between your feet — is, I think, suggested by individual physiology, although I believe one can adjust from the natural position and strengthen the supportive muscles in the process. For example, my natural position involves a fairly wide stance, yet I see a value in a narrow stance to strengthen the muscles around the knees. I wouldn’t suggest much experimentation until you’re fairly proficient, completely warmed up but not tired, or before your body awareness is well developed, because you’re more likely to train yourself right into bad form, straining your knees or low back if you’re not careful.

The natural stance of the goblet squat will ensure a more upright body during the downward motion. If you’re attentive to a straight-back position, a narrow-stance, butt-back goblet squat is perfectly save and very effective as an exercise you might keep in the arsenal for years to come.

Back to my warm-ups, the medicine ball goblets move agreeable to a clean from the floor/goblet squat/thruster effort that really gets my heart pumping and the full body working. Then I’m ready to move to goblets with a kettlebell by the horns — or a barbell or dumbbell, depending on where I’m training that day. Once things get heavier, I keep the reps at six or below because it’s an easy exercise to learn, but as one gets tired, things get sloppy and danger sets in.

Keep the goblet object close to your chest. Coach John points out that your elbows should be between your knees at the bottom, not on top or to the side of your knees (unlike the photo above, however that’s the only goblet squat photo currently floating around these parts).

When doing goblets with kettlebells, I like to follow them (or just as often, superset them) with swings. If using a dumbbell, I go for pullovers after… or between sets. These return the backside to an extended, upright position.

Want to really blast it? Superset your goblets with swings or pullovers and follow the whole package with elevated lunges. You won’t be forgiving me for a while. Ouch!

Here’s another thing: Because the weight used is so light, I do these goodies most every workout.

Nice!

Taskmaster Dan suggests this:

While doing your goblet squats, drop down to rock bottom, rise back up to just parallel, then drop down again and repeat many times. Then, without rest and still maintaining good form, do step-ups while holding your dumbbell or kettlebell in the goblet squat position. Yow!

While developed as a teaching exercise, many of us — especially the women — may like to keep this exercise around for the duration. Meanwhile, here are a couple of…

• Step-by-step how to squat instructions
• Squat description and squatting tips
  
• Krista on learning to squat, written for women — for whom goblet squats shine — but suitable for men, too

You can spend an afternoon over at Dan’s site for more unique training philosophy and techniques, here: Dan John’s website..

Much of the current kettlebell enthusiasm is focused on time and endurance, and with good reason because for conditioning a kettlebell is a remarkable tool. But old-school strong man devotee David Whitley has gone in the other direction: He’s using these chunks of weight to create exercises and combinations each one more difficult than the previous to execute, sometimes using a single kettlebell, but more often doubles, and occasionally two of differing weights, and sometimes even both of those in the same hand.

It’s a grin to watch Dave perform, and it’s also a pleasure to learn from him, as I did recently via his Full Body Power, Beyond the Basics intermediate and advanced kettlebell drill dvd. My notes are intense, three pages of mashed scribbles, as I studied his techniques covering variations of what he calls Follow the Leaders Series and his burpee combinations – think burpees with a single kettlebell or double kettlebells used for deadlifts, swings, cleans, high pulls, snatches, clean and press and clean, squat and press, all artfully tossed together to wipe out even the neediest Rocky fan.

The next day I joined the dvd for clean, squat and press variations, and after his refresher demonstrations, on to his advanced skills with the windmill and the Turkish get-ups. Next, he taught the kettlebell bent press and the two-hands anyhow. Shoulders plenty fatigued, I skipped out on the two-hands, but got fairly comfortable with the bentover screw-press, something I never in this lifetime expected to try, and more than a strongman circus lift, what it felt like was a significant shoulder stabilization exercise combined with unusual coordination. This twist, the screw-press, is a torso rotation you’ve probably never felt, and when coupled with stabilizing a heavy weight overhead is quite an experience if you notice those kind of things.

Throughout the dvd, Dave’s providing commentary; for instance, at one point he stopped to explain what he called the two sides of performance:

Tension is strength. Tension is power. Tension is slow. Tension is fatigue.

Relaxation is speed. Relaxation is mobility and flexibility, and it’s also a weakness. It’s endurance, but it’s weakness.

Tension is stronger, faster, but you give out sooner. Relaxation can go longer, but you’re not as strong. Work tension and relaxation equally.

Now, I have to add at first I was a little disappointed in the editing. I was watching it as a lecture instead of a workshop, and wished the student participation breaks had been edited out. But then I realized I could get off the couch, ya lazy bum, and go get a couple of kettlebells to follow along, and suddenly those unedited breaks became a bonus opportunity to practice each exercise in real time. Note to self: When it’s a workshop, do a little work, whydontcha.

At the end of the approximately 100-minute dvd – I apologize; I timed it for you, just under two hours, but forgot to make note of the minutes I stopped to scribble, and the dvd or website don’t give the runtime – my final thoughts were simple: This is an outstanding dvd for a kettlebell lifter who wants to move beyond the common and into the physically demanding and unusual. Dave’s a great teacher, and the exercise ideas and combinations are superb.

You can order this intermediate/advanced kettlebell workshop dvd here at fullbodypower.com, $49.95.

In this Fox Morning Show clip from Nashville, Dave explains kettlebell exercise and demonstrates with the reporter.

Linking around:

In this article over at Pavel Tsatsouline’s Dragon Door, Dave gives examples of how to extend your kettlebell drills in ways similar to some of the combinations found on the dvd.

His IronTamer site is here, where you can also sign up for the free IronTamer newsletter. Those interested in kettlebell training variety can grab Dave’s free ebook of 101 different kettlebell workouts on signup.

Catch this strongman’s regularly updated IronTamer blog here.

I don’t have to tell you my favorite part of the day is a morning cup of Leo’s java and an hour clicking around our forum for a visit with my great friends there. Still, for those who haven’t been around since the beginning and don’t know the players, sometimes it’s a little daunting to jump right in. Who’s who, and do they really know what they’re talking about? Is that guy joking or is this a serious argument? Once in a while it’s hard to tell, especially for newcomers.

So how about a sweet little intro to show you around? These are a few of the notable threads from August.

In the Main Flight Deck:

• Let’s begin with our memory thread of Arthur Jones, who, as you already know, died yesterday. Perhaps you have a memory of your own, something he wrote that triggered your training evolution back in the ’70s? Give us the scoop!

• Do you wake up with a numb arm sometimes? What’s causing that and how do you fix it? Michelle gets us going here in “Nighttime Numbness.”

• Farmer’s Walks — what’s not to like? Who’s doing what, and how; we’ll find out in this thread started by Tim Tyler of tylergrip.com.

• Up next: Quitting Smoking. Time for you to get onboard? Here’s some encouragement you can print out and tape to your carton of cigs. Getcha goin’.

• Kyle invites the Southern California locals to join him in this year’s Volkslauf October 13th. It’s an obstacle loop, either a 10k or a 5k; he knows the course from last year and has a training plan to get you in shape for the event. Ya got 6 weeks, go for it!

• We talked about this last week, still it’s a notable thread going strong. Whether you’re interested in fasting or not, the discussion is intriguing: Intermittent Fasting.

• Boris’ Squat RX instruction videos again topped the charts, and I’d be remiss to slide past this one, even though this, too, was pointed out earlier this month.

In the Bodybuilding Hangar:

• Well, heck, let’s tackle the toughest one first: Is Bodybuilding Healthy? If not, and we’re aging yet in it for the long haul, what can we change to be strong all the way into our longevity?

• Mark would like to know about squat depth, in particular how far past parallel should he go when doing a 20-rep squat program. Once he gets the answer, he then needs to know how exactly to get there.

In the Training Logs Forum:

Now here in the training log section, I couldn’t begin to select a few favored links for you. Some of the logs have been going strong since we brought the email discussion group over to the forum board back in spring of 2004. Other people started a new log each January, or when changing training focus for a variety of reasons. What began as an exercise in accountability became, I think for nearly everyone, a private place for group camaraderie. This is where individual attention is given when times are tough, PRs are abundant — or sparse — and consistency in training is paramount.

Pick a few training logs to read through; you’re sure to find one you can either learn from or contribute to, and perhaps you’ll get the bug to start a report of your own. You’re welcome here.

In the IOL APO/FPO Military Barracks:

• Over in the APO/FPO Barracks forum we’re happy to welcome a couple of Afghanistan-based troops to our military support space. From his plastic tent, Sgt. Clifton expands on his questions of diet and exercise; we welcome your Q&A assistance, our way of supporting these guys and gals (actually, so far it’s just gal, our Army Mom, who’s on her way home to the kids in slightly less than a month).

In the Kettlebell Training Forum:

• In the kettlebell forum, Stella, a veteran gymrat new to kettlebell training, requests our favorite kettlebell workouts in a thread that ranges from a simple swings ladder to a Tabata-style kettlebell snatch workout on video.

In the Vince Gironda Wild Physique Forum:

• Jack triggers a hearty discussion in, “Gironda Bench Press to Neck,” wherein, as you might expect, not too many are in favor of the exercise. The discussion, however, is illuminating, as was the rest of the study of Vince Gironda and his Wild Physique.

And now, I bid you adieu. Dave is finished with his part of the newsletter, so I’m up to bat in the clean-up position. There are countless more terrific threads in the forum, so many in fact, I think I’ll dig you out more treasures next month.

This simple device is a T-Handle. Dan John calls this bad boy a Hungarian Core Blaster, a name that obviously has a lot more panache than “t-handle.” Legend has it this device was the secret of the Hungarian hammer throwers’ success years ago. I like that name, but it is so flashy I think it may give people unrealistic expectations. They may be let down when they see the simple device to the left. It just can’t compete with the dozens of core gadgets on late night infomercials for flash and glitz, and to date lacks bikini clad miracle makeover endorsements.

But for results, I’ll stack the T-handle against anything you can make in five minutes for ten bucks. Nobody is let down by the effects of the swing, the exercise for which this tool is ideally suited.

If you are considering buying kettlebells, by all means make a t-handle and swing away. The swing is one of the most basic kettlebell movements. With a t-handle, you can decide what weight kettlebell will suit you.

Even if you aren’t interested in kettlebells, just about anyone can benefit from some swings. You can do swings Tabata style – eight sets of eight with ten seconds rest between sets – for a four minute, minimum cost, minimum footprint interval workout. You can do light swings as part of your warmup.
Directions for making a T-handle (for those of you who use directions) can be found in the IOL Wiki.

In Will You Keep it Up? we saw how easy it is to test our home gym sticktoitiveness with a single kettlebell. Okay, let’s say you’re game. Now all you need is an example of a simple kettlebell workout.

Swings.

Wow, that’s pretty simple, alright.

Will it get boring? Maybe. Especially at first when your head tells you to do more, as the swing workout’s got your heart ramming through your chest and your lungs can’t gain any traction.

There’s not much to a swing workout if you’re putting in the time physically, but your head’s still wrapped around your work project — a common enough symptom with first-time home gym trainees. Kettlebell swings can be very taxing, each single rep at a time; the movement also lends itself to mindlessness, and it may take purposeful attention to excel rep by rep.

That’s what makes it such a good testing ground for a beginning home gym workout program. After all, we’re trying to find out if you’ll last at home training before you invest the money and space in a home gym.

• Read more…

The biggest downside of switching from a commercial gym to a home gym? You can’t borrow your bud’s to give it a test run.

How are you going to discover if this home gym stuff is for you? Will you use it or hate it? If you’re not sure you’ll use your home gym equipment, you’ll be afraid to let your gym membership go, afraid to commit the money for workout equipment you won’t use. Heck, you won’t even want to clean out the garage.

Well. For sure you don’t want to clean the garage. What’s that got to do with anything?

Bill’s three-part series on setting up a home gym opened with his minimalist option, but I’d like to back that off further, all the way back to one single item: a kettlebell.

• Read more…

The often-referenced goblet squats were invented by Dan John a to teach his student athletes how to squat well, his favorite overhead squats specifically. The thinking was the goblet groove would help the athlete learn to squat between the legs, rather than with the upper body stiff at the hips. I suspect it also works very, very well for teaching women how to squat.

You see, we have a hip thing going on. In case you didn’t know.We are, for the most part, more suited for front squats over the more common back squats, too, so you guys trying to teach your spouses to squat should take note of Coach John’s handy teaching tool.

My lagging blogger partner Byron Chandler notes:

The goblet squat is excellent for teaching you to spread your stance and “squat between your heels.” The reason you squat upright with a goblet squat is because it’s basically a front squat. You won’t be able to duplicate that upright position with a back squat. Incidentally, if you are long legged, you might be better off focusing on the front squat rather than the back squat.

Many of us took to them immediately. In fact, I use them regularly with a medicine ball as a pre-workout warm-up, working the toes to the shoulders… scratch that, higher. Gets my head in the game, too.

I usually proceed to a medicine ball clean/goblet/thruster effort as the warm-up proceeds.

Well into the warm-up, I like to get and stay down at the bottom position, hold and stretch a little. Dave doesn’t agree with this and says it looks like a warm-up to a knee problem instead. So shake a little salt into the sweetness.

As an aside: A lot of us have a noisy knee thing going on. Fred Hatfield (you know him as Dr. Squat) discusses squats and knee issues here, and for an opposing viewpoint may I quote Coach Bill Starr about noisy knees:

“If they don’t hurt, I wouldn’t be concerned. I’ve trained with quite a few lifters who experienced noise in their knees when they squatted, but it never caused them any real trouble. Naturally, if they do start hurting, it would be wise to see a doctor.”

Your foot position — the width between your feet — is, I think, suggested by individual physiology, although I believe one can adjust from the natural position and strengthen the supportive muscles in the process. For example, my natural position involves a fairly wide stance, yet I see a value in a narrow stance to strengthen the muscles around the knees. I wouldn’t suggest much experimentation until you’re fairly proficient, completely warmed up but not tired, or before your body awareness is well developed, because you’re more likely to train yourself right into bad form, straining your knees or low back if you’re not careful.

The natural stance of the goblet squat will ensure a more upright body during the downward motion. If you’re attentive to a straight-back position, a narrow-stance, butt-back goblet squat is perfectly save and very effective as an exercise you might keep in the arsenal for years to come.

Back to my warm-ups, the medicine ball goblets move agreeable to a clean from the floor/goblet squat/thruster effort that really gets my heart pumping and the full body working. Then I’m ready to move to goblets with a kettlebell by the horns — or a barbell or dumbbell, depending on where I’m training that day. Once things get heavier, I keep the reps at six or below because it’s an easy exercise to learn, but as one gets tired, things get sloppy and danger sets in.

Keep the goblet object close to your chest. Coach John points out that your elbows should be between your knees at the bottom, not on top or to the side of your knees (unlike the photo above, however that’s the only goblet squat photo currently floating around these parts).

When doing goblets with kettlebells, I like to follow them (or just as often, superset them) with swings. If using a dumbbell, I go for pullovers after… or between sets. These return the backside to an extended, upright position.

Want to really blast it? Superset your goblets with swings or pullovers and follow the whole package with elevated lunges. You won’t be forgiving me for a while. Ouch!

Here’s another thing: Because the weight used is so light, I do these goodies most every workout.

Nice!

Taskmaster Dan suggests this:

While doing your goblet squats, drop down to rock bottom, rise back up to just parallel, then drop down again and repeat many times. Then, without rest and still maintaining good form, do step-ups while holding your dumbbell or kettlebell in the goblet squat position. Yow!

While developed as a teaching exercise, many of us — especially the women — may like to keep this exercise around for the duration. Meanwhile, here are a couple of…

• Step-by-step how to squat instructions
• Squat description and squatting tips
  
• Krista on learning to squat, written for women — for whom goblet squats shine — but suitable for men, too

You can spend an afternoon over at Dan’s site for more unique training philosophy and techniques, here: Dan John’s website..