The quest to be the best

Hmm Looks very similar to the picture I posted in my last article eh? I wonder why....

Since my last post was about biomechanics my friend challenged me to apply it to kettlebells and I am accepting that challenge. Please let me know if I write anything wrong/hard to understand so I can improve myself

Let me put a disclaimer here. I am NOT saying that kettlebells are the ‘be all end all’ of strength training, fat-loss, weightlifting or whatever you want to call it. It is one of the MANY tools that can be used and for best results; use different tools from your arsenal so that your body does not get the chance to adapt and it will never know what hit it.

Another disclaimer, I am currently pursuing a diploma and have very little real world experience so what I say may or may not be true, furthermore what I am about to write on are just general observations.

Okay let’s get the ball rolling. The basic movement of kettlebell is the kettlebell swing. There are two parts to this. The concentric and eccentric portion. Concentric is when the bell is behind you and you are about to explode with your hips till the bell reaches about chest/abdominal region.(NOTE: It should not go up too high because that means you are using your shoulders to bring it up more than it should be). The eccentric is all momentum. There is no tempo like typical free weight exercises. This movement might look very simple but a lot of people get deceived by its simplicity that they let their ego take over. This movement is the basis for the rest of the other movements and should be properly drilled before moving on to more complex movements.

Let me give my personal experience from observation. I feel that people who don’t understand why others are so into kettlebells are the same people who ‘ego-lift’. What I mean by this is that they want to use the heaviest kettlebells they are able to barely lift and yet want to swing and up being the biggest jerks (pun intended) ever known to man.

The kettlebell swing can be used as a great tool to show the average joe how to lift with proper posture (neck, upper and lower back alignment) and activate the posterior chain (lower back,hamstrings,glutes,calves) instead of ‘muscling’ the swing. You have to grasp the concept of making love vs having rough meaningless sex. Kettlebell lifting is like making love while Ego-lifting is something like rough sex. You get the picture?

The two most effective coaching cues for this move is to ‘stick your ass out’ (to spare the lower back from excessive torque) and to ‘lift your toes up/put your bodyweight on your heels’ because this will AUTOMATICALLY activate your posterior chain. I have personally tried to do the opposite of this and suffice to say, it was a mess. Losing balance constantly and using the wrong muscles to do the same movement is not efficient exercising.

Another cue that I learnt from my good friend Andyn is to ‘keep the bell close to your groin’ because of several reasons which makes perfect sense if you think about it. You want to make the distance travelled by the bell as short and efficient as possible and for a person like me with long limbs, it might be ‘natural’ to have a longer range of motion but I have to consciously bring the bell close to my crotch area every time I do a repetition so that I don’t waste my energy and I will be also be able to generate much more explosiveness into the next repetition because it is much more closer to my body.

One possible debate is how much to bend the knees or whether it should be bent at all? As always, the answer is a gray area because there MUST be a slightest degree of bent knees (think stiff legged Deadlift) to spare the knees. For me personally, I don’t take note of how much I bend my knees because as long as my form (posture) is good, then it’s all good as there are no compensations (mobility and flexibility wise).

In conclusion, I feel that in life and weightlifting, EGO is mankind’s greatest enemy and if we learn how to defeat it, we can learn so much more and be a better human and lifter. I am just sharing what I know so please feel free to correct me.

Discuss how physical activity helps in the prevention of obesity-related illnesses.

Physical activity is one of the main factors with regards to the prevention of obesity-related illnesses such as Diabetes type 2,High Blood Pressure and some forms of cancer and more. I personally feel that ANY physical activity is better than none. I always hate the excuse people give when they say they got no time yet they are able to watch their favourite TV shows and surf the net, refreshing every minute to see their Facebook Status Updates.

Physical activity can be very as simple as taking the stairs down instead of using the lift. That is a good start although it might not have the desired effect of PREVENTING obesity-related illnesses, especially if you keep eating the way you eat that made you obese in the first place. If you want to see a drastic improvement in your health and wellbeing, you should get your butt down to the gym and try to learn as much as possible to make sure you don’t waste time and be efficient in the gym.

The reason why exercising is blatantly effective at preventing obesity and its related illnesses is that it promotes insulin sensitivity and reduces insulin resistance which basically means that you are fat(To varying degrees I might add. The more insulin resistant you are, the more fatter you are and the more closer you are to metabolic syndrome.)Exercise makes your muscles more insulin sensitive and slowly over time, you become more and more insulin sensitive(lean mean fighting machine) and less insulin resistant(walking tub of lard).

Why would someone want to prevent obesity-related illnesses when one can prevent obesity itself? If one takes the necessary steps as outlined in the previous problems, I am sure one can slowly but surely fight off obesity for good and live life to the fullest.

*This is just one of my many essay questions that I have written for school work. More coming soon! If there is anything wrong or if there is a need for constructive criticism/feedback just let me know!