Enter The Kettlebell!: Strength Secret of the Soviet Supermen Paperback – May 1, 2018

This book is phenomenal.I have read a variety of books about kettlebells and watched countless DVDs. This one is the absolute best.Kettlebell exercises are simple (do NOT confuse "simple" with "easy" !!!). Pavel spends a lot of time breaking down each exercise into stages and always emphasizes the importance of proper technique and safety.The Swing, The Get-up, The Clean, The Press, The Clean and Press, and The Snatch are the techniques that are covered.The Swing is the most beneficial aerobic exercise I have ever done (made all the more intense because of the strength-training and flexibility components). I dislocated my ankle a few months ago and have been unable to run as I normally would. The Swing has allowed me to not just maintain my level of cardiovascular fitness, but improve it. All with no impact and minimal stress/torque on my ankle. Awesome!Pavel is also conscious of the fact that not all people will be able to do all of the exercises without building up to them. Box squats, vertical leaps, etc. all help you build up to being able to do the swing properly. If you take the time to work on the basics, your time investment will be returned to you.Working with kettlebells is the most time-efficient workout I have ever experienced. Cardio, strength-training and flexibility all in one workout. Anyone who complains of not having time to workout needs to get their hands on a kettlebell and some of Pavel's instructional materials. Fifteen minutes of working with a kettlebell beats hours in a gym any day.I have this book and the accompanying DVD and I would recommend doing both. The book is a great resource for the history of kettlebells and for detailed explanations of movements, techniques and advice. The DVD is great for putting it all together and seeing proper technique in action. One of the main criticisms of the DVD is that it is instructional only and does not include a workout routine that you watch and workout with at the same time. Do you understand why there isn't a routine? Because kettlebell work is about repetitions with proper technique. Do you need to watch Pavel do 200 swings in a row? No. I would, but that's for purely aesthetic reasons (I'll admit it: He's HOT). You don't need a routine laid out for you because once you have good technique, it's all about just building up your strength and conditioning with more reps.My one recommendation would be to get a heart rate monitor (you won't believe how many calories you burn!) and it helps you keep in the proper heart rate zone for whatever your cardio-conditioning goal is.Pavel does ham it up with the evil Russian drill instructor persona, but it's endearing. This man knows his stuff.

There are many ways to skin the proverbial cat when it comes to exercising. Why not simplify your exercise routine down to a few exercises that cover all your major muscle groups? Pavel has a few different programmes that do this, and not only with kettlebells. While the kettlebell is over 300 years old as an exercise tool, this system is a new one invented by Pavel based on combining ancient trial and error with modern continued trial and error and also science and theory. This programme, which came out I guess when it was published in 2006 goes through some preliminary exercises until you get into a routine based on 3 major exercises with an optional 4th one. The three major ones are the Clean&Press, the one armed swing, and the snatch. As the one armed swing is actually a "toned down" snatch, the "Enter the Kettlebell" programme is really about only TWO major exercises: the Clean&Press and the snatch. I'm capitalizing Clean&Press here because in fact this is the absolute heart of the programme. The goal is to eventually Clean and Press half your body weight and to snatch the kettlebell 200 times in 10 minutes. Evidently, it takes time to get to this and Pavel sets out a recommended training schedule to follow. It is not a daily routine but rather a weekly one, that allows for a lot of variation. It is a very serious, "all out" training regimen, and is a time tested and true method to truly master the kettlebell as conceived of by Pavel, who brought the thing over from Russia back in the 90s. Generally speaking, you start with "ladders" of cleans and presses, with optional ladders of pullups (if you have a pullup bar available) mixed into the cycle. A "ladder" is a routine where you do an exercise once, then twice in a row, then three times, etc; so a ladder of "5" means repeating the movement once, twice, thrice, four times, then five times, for a total of 15 repetitions. Exactly how many rungs of the ladder you go up and how many ladders you do in a given day are variant based on how far along you are in the programme. After all this, you do several minutes of single handed swings or snatches. The theory behind only having the two major movements is that the clean and press exercise develops the entire body with an emphasis on the pushing muscles and the snatch develops the entire body also but with an emphasis on the puling muscles. According to Pavel's thought, which I find convincing, if you do one major push and one major pull movement in your routine, you cover all the major muscles. I suppose if you don't want to buy too many kettlebells you could do the entire programme with just a 24kg if you're a man and a 16kg bell if you're a woman, but the idea is to progress until you meet the two challenges and then maintain these skills. There is of course a lot of variety in this programme and this is just the base of it.Interestingly, about 9 years later, Pavel came out with an alternate programme called "Simple and Sinister" or "S&S" for short. To me it is not clear as to which programme is better or for what reasons, but what I like about Pavel is that he designs programmes that are each excellent in their own way but all of them make you terrifically strong without taking too much time out of your life. In other words, his programmes are very efficient, maximally efficient. In my own case, I follow S&S religiously but I add "Enter the Kettlebell" onto it to a limited extent, normally one cycle of cleans and presses and chinups daily. The magic to the programme is that by only doing two or three exercises, albeit doing them quite intensively, you develop your whole body to look spectacular and to be terrifically strong and fit.

Okay I know Pavel has some very rabid fans and detractors out there. He seems to polarize people right off into either camp, so with that in mind I will try to be as unbiased as possible. Enter the Kettlebell is a great book mainly for beginners. The book itself is well made with quality paper and good illustrations. Some consideration went into the design of it, and personally that's a big plus in my book (no pun intended). Color photos, glossy heavy-duty pages, and good sized print makes it very easy on the eyes. Zero complaints on the physical properties.As for the content well this I think is where people can start having their differences. Pavel pulls no punches. He loves kettlebells, and makes no bones about them being *the* way to train for strength, and all but says its the manly way to build functional strength. I personally like that spin - it makes you feel part of something and gets you excited to go lift. Problem is sometimes its laid on a bit too thick, and he sometimes turns it into a sales pitch for other products. (this is why it does not get five stars)The program and exercises themselves are top-notch with a lot of detail to explaining them and showing how to not do them. This is something people have complained about - that he wastes too much time showing silly pictures of doing it wrong. I know that many of us knows to not do some of this stuff but I think its great he's trying to cover the bases. Too many fitness books just show pictures of how it's done right. In any event I would still recommend seeing some videos of how the exercises are performed. It is a great book, and if you are new to lifting kettlebells, or just want to see how Pavel and his followers do it is worth the investment.