Videos, tapes and DVDs
18 August 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I suppose its only natural that people would ask for tape and DVD recommendationsI dont want to get into an extended discussion but wanted to mention two videos that are worth passing along one golden oldie and one new DVD.
Mahlers Aggressive Strength: kettlebell solutions for size and strength
Mike Mahler is a young kettlebell instructor who has produced a 90-minute DVD on how to extract maximum results from these throw-back Russian fitness tools. Pavel Tsatsouline earned his Master of Sport designation in competitive kettlebell lifting before immigrating to this country a decade ago. He introduced these heavy, awkward weighted balls with thick handles to a surprisingly receptive American audience. Mike is a certified senior kettlebell instructor working out of California and puts his own unique spin on hoisting K-bells to elicit differing physiological effects.
Light K-bells lifted for high reps make for lung-searing cardio work while hoisting the heavier 53-88 pound bells provide aggressive strength when a specific training protocol is followed. Mahlers DVD concentrates on the strength-building attributes associated with hoisting heavier bells and demonstrates his facile and fluid technique in tugging and pushing the purposefully awkward kettlebells. At 90-minutes in length this video has enough meat to keep adherents busy for the next twelve months. His explanations are detailed and thankfully he is clear speaker who is as fluid verbally as he is physically.
My suspicion is (not being part of the K-bell universe) that his aggressive strength approach is the next rung up the ladder for individuals looking to bias their K-bell training more towards the brute strength attributes. His handling of the heavier bells is aimed at developing explosive power and veers away from the broader and more balanced approach Im sure new instructors and workshop attendees are exposed to. Mahlers approach is for those interested in the raw power and strength-infusing attributes derived from systematic and consistent training of the heavier bells.
My only reservation is the dialogue to demonstration ratio: I enjoyed seeing him actually lift the bells and picked up some excellent technical pointers (particularly his wrist snaps that convert upward pull into the push-ready position) and felt that his explanations were often overkill. On the other hand I could also grasp that someone with less than my four decades pulling and pushing on heavy objects might want and need his lengthy technical explanations regarding the how and why.
You can purchase Mike’s DVD in our online store. The special price is only good until Monday 8/21. See his website, Mahler’s Aggressive Strength for more on Mike.
Dorian Yates: Blood & Guts, the video
Shot seven years ago when Yates was at his peak this is the only bodybuilding video Ive ever seen that I thought worthy of recommendation. After a brief full-color biographical introduction of Yates career, the scene shifts to the subterranean hell hole of Dorians Temple Street Gym. Set on a Birmingham (England) side street, patrons walk down a set of stairs into a dank, ill-equipped gym that looks like a set from Blade Runner. Torn carpet, moisture laden walls, low claustrophobic ceilings, old machines covered with rust, the atmosphere is foreboding and becomes more so when the film switches to black and white. Now we go to cinema verite as Yates and his drill sergeant training partner, the fearsome Leroy appear and commence wordlessly. Ignoring the camera the duo begin the first workout of the week, chest. They begin incline presses on the smith machine. The men lift, the camera records and the action does the talking. Not a word of explanation is offered and none is needed you learn the lift by looking and you learn his training strategy by observing every set of every workout for an entire week. There is more drama than an action movie: watch Yates push 1500-pounds for 10-reps, pause, suck in 2-3 breaths, yell at the top of his lungs and push two more. What better demonstration of extreme effort needed to force muscle growth? Why mar this perfect example with words? What is there to say? You do all you can do then you find a way through guts, determination, insanity or willpower to somehow do two more reps. Leroy is the perfect training partner, profane, profound, always there to lend a finger or just enough extra help (and not a single ounce more) to allow Yates to complete another rep or two. Leroy uses Cockney expletives, louder than an air horn, alternately impugning Dorians manhood or appealing to his ego, all to coax or mock The Diesel into pushing or pulling one more growth producing rep. The empty gym reverberates with yelling and screaming and teeth gnashing effort but the second the set is complete a deathly silence envelopes the gym.
My wonderful friend Julian Schmidt, senior writer at Flex magazine, told me a related tale about the shooting of the video. The videographer had a technical problem that caused him to miss the final top set of a particular exercise after a lengthy explanation as to what and why the glitch had occurred, he informed Dorian that everything had been corrected and they could re-shoot the blotched set. Well I reckon you can bloody well come back next week and shot it when this particular exercise again comes up in the rotation. Yates is massive, 295-pounds, just starting his pre-competition par-down that would end with him weighing 261 sporting a 2.5% body fat percentile. His training, erroneously pegged as Heavy Duty is actually powerlifting with forced reps. Just as Coan or Karwoski or Furnas would do, he picks a major compound multi-joint exercise, takes plenty of warm-ups (ops! There goes one-set-to-failure out the window! Good riddance!) before hitting a single all-out set to failure. Where Coan or Kirk would end the set, Leroy steps in and administers one, or at most two, forced reps. Finished, they move onto the next exercise. After blasting away at the compound multi-joint super heavy exercise, they perform one or two isolation exercises to finish up the body part. The weekly training regimen is shown start to finish and by tapes end its all plain as day. Never has so much been described in such amazing detail with so few words. Never was the old adage more profoundly demonstrated: a picture truly is worth a thousand words.
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