Kettlebell, Pavel and Me
16 May 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Tom bought this old column by Pavel Tsatsouline to my attention…time flies. I remember it like yesterday…the dangerous Russian and myself sitting on the back deck regaling one another about feats and exploits we had seen or experienced. I prodded the genuinely modest former Spetznaz commando instructor on the specifics of his Master of Sport designation; the most elite of athletic designations in Rodina, the Motherland. Even to this day, long after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Master of Sport remains the most elusive and exclusive of all sport distinctions in Russia or the sister states – or perhaps the world. Begrudgingly he told me of what was required of him to win M or S in kettlebell hoisting…over a cigar and a glass of Bushmills sitting on the deck after eating aged steaks (he ate three succulent ribeyes) I told him he needed to alert the American public to this archaic yet intriguing brutal athletic endeavor. He expressed dubiousness that I brushed aside…’You underestimate the size, scope and pain tolerance of the no-necked segment of the American strength athlete population.’
The rest, as the saying goes, was history….
Power by Pavel Newsletter
Issue 106, 11/05/06
Comrades,
Five years ago Dragon Door shipped our first Russian kettlebell. A Happy — or should I say ‘painful? —anniversary! Do you know how the Russian kettlebell invasion began? My friend Marty Gallagher, former Coach for Powerlifting Team USA, and I were enjoying steaks in his backyard in an undisclosed location on the East Coast. We were trading old war stories over a mouthful of Mennonite-raised beef. Marty told me about Ed Coan, Kirk Karwoski, and other champions he had coached. I told him about kettlebells. Gallagher thoughtfully finished chewing his steak and suggested, “Why don’t you write an article for MILO?” You know, the magazine for crazy guys who bend nails and lift rocks. I said, “Marty, you don’t get it; this is the most painful workout you could imagine, who would want to do it or even read about it?” Earlier I had made the mistake of explaining a Russian slur, the “collective farmer”, to Marty. He used it on me and told me that I did not understand Americans. The subversive “Vodka, Pickle Juice, Kettlebell Lifting, and Other Russian Pastimes’ was published in 1998. The article was extremely well received by the most ruthless critics in the strength world. I started getting mail from guys with busted noses, cauliflower ears, scars, or at least Hells Angels tattoos. Incredulous, I told my friend and publisher John Du Cane about it. He thought for a minute and said: “Let’s do it! I’ll.’
Pavel is one of my closest friends and though his methods differ from mine on account of background and circumstance, he will be one of the few I trust to carry on the true flag of old school brutalism when I shuffle off this mortal coil. The trend nowadays is to make everything easier and call the dilution of effort, a ‘modern innovation’ instead of what it really is: a lame attempt to make things that should stay difficult easy. Ease makes the effective ineffectual and is to be avoided. K-bells are brutal and cumbersome and difficult and until someone starts making kettlebell shirts or kettlebell knee wraps they’ll never lose that sheen of difficulty that makes them so brutally effective….
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