How To Use Unconventional Fitness Gear Like Kettlebells, Battleropes, Maces, Clubs And More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, people are starting to look.

At new ways to get jobs done that they're looking for. If you're looking for aesthetics, if you're looking for performance, if you're looking to excel at adventure racing, they're all different goals. And, you know, I think that ultimately, if we just say, hey, no matter what your goal is, you should be in there lifting barbells exclusively. I think we're doing a big disservice to a lot of people and then the risk to reward ratio for whatever we're selecting to do. Like you said, should everybody swing a mace around their head? Probably not, but there's a lot of different ways to use a mace that don't ball sw. I think that in person coaching is the most ideal way to do that because there's instant feedback besides pain. I mean, essentially, when you're exploring a lot of this stuff, you do things wrong. There's a piece of metal hitting your body. You don't really know what you're doing that's incorrect, except for the fact that something hurt.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And these days, one of the places that you'll often find me is either in my basement or in my driveway playing with some of the unconventional fitness equipment that you've heard me talk about in the past few months on the show. Things like battle ropes, maces, steel bells clubs, kettlebells with monkey faces on them, and a variety of other fitness gear that seems kind of weird, kind of mysterious, but is actually kind of fun to use if you know what you're doing. Now, I know that in the past I've talked about this stuff for like, you know, a few seconds and kind of moved on. But today I want to delve into why I use these type of things, how you can use them, how they came about in the first place, because there's some really interesting history behind some of this stuff. And so we're basically just going to geek out on weird, unconventional fitness gear today and what you can do with it. Now as you listen in, if you want to check out the show notes for anything that we talk about, you can go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Weird Fitness that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com weird fitness if you want to delve into any of the resources that my guest and I talk about today. So my guest is John Wolfe. John Wolfe is the owner and the founder of something called Wolff Fitness Systems. It's a great last name for being in fitness. And this is basically an unconventional gym that focuses on the integration of a bunch of different movement theories with unconventional tools. Well, now what John does is he's the director of fitness education for a company called Onnit. And at Onnit, he helps to train people with things like kettlebells and clubs and maces and sandbags and suspension training tools and even body weight exercises. And he's kind of a ninja when it comes to these weird fitness tools. So, John, thanks for coming on the call, man.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Ben. It was great to be here.

And for those of you who want to see a pretty badass photo of John, I've got one of him on the podcast Show Notes swinging around a club. So he knows how to wield these things. And he looks like he walks the walk as well, not just talks the talk. So I love to have people like that on the show who are out there in the trenches. So, John, let's, let's start here, man, because this is something I've always wondered about. And so I'm just going to ask you straight up. You guys have kettlebells and they have weird faces on them. Like, some have monkey faces, some, I believe, have zombie faces. What's the story there? Why not just a straight up, good old competition kettlebell?

You know, to be honest, Ben, at first it took me a while to really, to really get the real meaning behind that. And, you know, it took me being out here and on it and seeing the response people have to these pieces because they're functional, you know, you can use them. But the thing about it is there are pieces of art. And a friend of mine had written an article not too long ago, it says, you know, when training transcends just proficiency, it's an artful expression of yourself. And, you know, when you become an artist in movement or artists with any particular tool, then you start thinking about how you can use more refined tools. Like, you know, like you start swinging a golf club. Well, eventually you start swinging these expensive clubs. Or if you're thinking about a samurai sword, you might have a training sword. And then as you ascend, you, you have a really masterfully crafted piece of art that you use to, you know, in your craft, whether it's fitness or whether it was the samurai in war, these are pieces of art. And there's a great sense of pride in owning and mastering your movement and your technique, but also having this piece of art that you're using, you're creating, Creating something beautiful with.

Is Aubrey or somebody over there on it just like infatuated with gorillas and zombies or. I mean, why not have, I don't know, like the Mona Lisa or something like that?

Well, I think the, the primal bells, all of the, the primates that has to do a lot with Joe Rogan's influence. So, you know, he talks a lot about how, you know, human evolution and we're just a bunch of apes on a spinning planet. And so there's a huge, huge background regarding that. Zombies, man. I, I don't. I think zombies are just hot. You know, they've been hot the last couple years lately. Not personally hot in the sense that I'm sure looking to hook up with the zombie, but they're, they're everywhere. And so we haven't had zombie bells available for purchase for a while, but they might be having a return because there's just so many people requesting them lately. We came out with these line called the Legend Bells. So you have like the Werewolf Cyclops and a couple others that are becoming. Coming out in the near future. And you know, this just taking, taking these references from popular culture or, or, you know, having, having some fun with it. Really, Really. I don't know if a Mona Lisa bell would be really the way to go.

Yeah. Have you ever noticed when training with one of these kettlebells that has the face on it that it seems to. The. The face almost seems to protrude a little bit farther than like a normal competition kettlebell would like occasionally. You know, I know I'm asking you to like potentially say something bad about your own brand, but, like, have you ever noticed how that face kind of rubs against the wrist at all? Is that an issue at all?

Well, I mean, you know, it's not, it's not a consistent profile, you know, so you definitely want to take that into account. You know, the backsides of the bells are generally more rounded. They do a lot of work to try to make sure that they're evenly weighted so that, you know, even though there is a face on one side, that the bell is not going to swing untrue as a result. But yeah, you know, you probably want, depending upon your dimensions as well, it's going to impact you differently.

Right.

You know, someone with a thinner arm or longer, longer arm might feel it contact you in a different point. The best way to do it is just to know what exercises you're going to do. And if you plan on using one of these pieces, you may be conscious about which direction the face is in, when it's going to make impact. You know, generally I'd recommend having the face not be the part hitting your forearm.

For people who don't really know how to use kettlebells, what would you say? Like, say you didn't know anything about kettlebells, John, and you wanted to kind of like learn the ropes as quickly as possible. Would you recommend a course, a dvd, a specific set of articles, or where would you go if you wanted to learn how to use kettlebells as quickly and efficiently as possible?

You know, that's a really good question because my whole philosophy with coaching, especially when people are becoming familiarized with new tools, new methodologies, is kind of the way I describe it as 0 to 60. My coaching is about getting you from a lack of, a lack of familiarity, a lack of experience. That's zero. Right. You're at a dead standstill regarding that methodology. At the very least to 60, which is not as far from the end range, even a pin to two miles an hour. Right. But it's right when you gain enough momentum to start coasting. And so I think that in person, coaching is the most ideal way to do that because there's instant feedback besides pain. I mean, essentially when you're exploring a lot of this stuff, you do things wrong. It's a piece of metal, A piece of metal hitting your body without any, anybody over overseeing what's happening. You don't really know what you're doing that's incorrect except for the fact that something hurt.

Right.

And so, you know, a coach is such a valuable tool because if I can get you from 0 to 60 with minimum minimal amount of discomfort and framing success incrementally so that it's progressive and what you couldn't do at the beginning of the hour, at the end of the hour, you're doing things that you weren't really even aware were something within the realm of possibility. That's my goal. So that after I leave, you know how to use the tool safely. You have a basic skill set that you can get a great workout with, and we demonstrate that within the session. And then you have enough knowledge to kind of coast from there. You can start looking at DVDs and at, you know, online resources you know, there's a lot of resources out there that are just focused on giving you a workout, but there's no technical coaching involved. So tools like these, I think more than anything, the best way to assure that you're going to have a good experience is to have with somebody you trust and is going to get you that same type of experience. And then delving deeper, if that's not available to you, then just make sure that you find resources that are geared towards introducing the tool, understanding safety, understanding basic mechanics, and then going from there. Not jumping into YouTube and trying to emulate the thing that you think is the coolest looking move out there.

Yeah, most of my experience in learning how to use any of these tools properly has been either being at conferences and dropping into, for example, like, Paleo Effects had a club course, so I dropped in the club course and did that for like two hours, right? And that was all it took for me to at least learn how to do a few moves proficiently. Or when I went to sealfit Academy, we spent an entire morning on kettlebells and I learned how to do about 10 different moves at a decent level of proficiency there. But I agree, like using YouTube and using articles for a lot of this stuff. You know, it's cool to have these things on hand and play around with them, but if you don't know what you're doing and haven't had an expert teach you how to use them properly, I think there can be a little bit of risk of injury. But I feel the same way about barbells, right? Like, I think everybody, before they hop into doing squats, deads, presses, et cetera, that they need to either hire a USA weightlifting coach or they need to get in touch with a good strength coach, right? Like not just a personal trainer and spandex, but like a good strength coach to teach them how to lift properly. So I don't want to give anybody the impression that I'm all about learning everything you need to know about fitness from a, from a podcast. But I do want to jump into some of the other weird pieces of fitness gear that you guys have there on it and also that you use in your coaching, John. So kettlebells are probably the most talked about, but there are some other things too, like a battle rope. Can you, can you tell me about where a battle rope first came from? Like, where did you first start seeing battle ropes pop up? Or what's the history of them?

You know, my. I think that more than anything else, the history would probably be about Dock workers and manual labor in terms of understanding the, the impact of moving around a rope and how much weight you're moving around over the course of, you know, the length of the rope. But, you know, as far as a training methodology and a training tool, a gentleman by the name of John Brookfield really, you know, systematize and proliferated that information is saying, hey, there's this concept of undulation, and basically you're moving mass over the course of this long rope. There's unanticipated type of experience that you'll have depending upon what your goal is. Maximum power output, a continuous short and fast wave approach. There's just so many different ways you can use the ropes. We use them is a corrective mechan, corrective tool, conditioning tool. I mean, to be honest, if you're doing the, you know, waves, if you're creating waves in that short, sharp, repetitive fashion, it's amazing how fast you can fatigue your upper body. It's. It's literally like, you know, sprinting for your upper body.

So to describe this to people who haven't seen it before, the battle rope, it's basically just like a heavy rope with a handle on both ends. And you generally have the rope anchored against the wall, right? Like it. Like in my gym, for example, and in my basement, I literally just went to the hardware store and bought an anchor, used a stud finder and, you know, screwed that into the stud in the wall, passed the battle rope through the end of that. And so it's basically just like a giant heavy rope for people who haven't seen it before. But you're talking about waves, John. What do you mean by waves when you're talking about that in reference to the battle rope?

Well, in terms of waves, you're creating waves of energy first, initiating that wave with your body. So it's kind of an interesting thing is I've been talking about it and teaching it. A lot of people, they see somebody kind of spastically flexing and extending their arms in a, in a stable stance and trying to move the rope. And, and what I've seen is time and time again, not only do people create a lot of fatigue when they just try to do that, you know, just pure lose pure effort and the lack of understanding of what's going on, but you're just not getting the, the outcomes they want. So like you said, the rope is anchored to a certain point. You have a certain length of rope. The length of the rope contributes to the total amount of mass of the rope as well as the diameter of the rope. So if you had a 30 foot rope, 1 1/2 inch rope or 2 inch rope is going to be a big, a big difference between that 30 foot rope at a two and a half inch diameter. Or if you extend that length, 40 foot or 50 foot rope is going to be a lot more mass that you have to move. Now the wave, wave generally would be. Think about a, like a full body lift and then pulling the elbows back to create that initiate a wave down from the end of your hand all the way to the anchor point.

And so, so the rope is actually a wave. You're actually, if you look at the rope, it's producing like a, like an ocean wave along the length of the rope as you, as you slam the rope down and you lift it up.

Exactly, exactly. So you're measuring the intensity of the wave by amplitude as well as how far the wave would travel.

Have there ever been any studies on whether people actually get stronger using something like a battle rope or is it just basically a tool to jack the heart rate up?

You know, it'd be hard pressed to say there's just so many different applications of the rope. So can you get stronger? I mean you could use a rope as an isometric tool. Wrap it around something that won't move and start pulling against it and it just be an isometric pull. You'd get pretty darn strong depending upon how you apply that methodology. Because it's a time tested methodology as far as the waves and that approach. It's a lesson in efficiency and conditioning. Without a doubt. As far as strength is concerned. It's such a vague term, it would be hard to say how would we measure that strength. It definitely does put some added stress on various different tissues, connective tissues at the joints, elbows, wrists. You're working on positioning so you're avoiding getting pulled forward with that undulation pull of the rope as you send the wave down. There's that unanticipated that you probably experienced before benchmark. That first wave pulls you forward. And so you have to learn how to kind of stand your ground. There's a lot of little adaptations that are happening. But again, you know, as we talk about strength, you know that's. We have to put it in a better context. I think is the statement I would say is depends on how you define strength.

Yeah, I mean I've found that with a battle rope, for example, I can do slams and waves with it. And that's great for interval training for Tabata sets, for getting the heart rate up. But I will also walk to the middle of the rope so that you're almost holding the weight of the rope at your shoulders. And I can do, like, a set of thrusters or squats to overhead press and get a pretty significant strength effect from something like that. You know, again, I personally haven't seen research that compares, you know, battle rope for strength versus traditional barbells or dumbbells for strength. But I certainly can lift a rope almost in the same fashion that I do a weight, and I've. I've found it to work for stuff like that personally.

You know, one of the drills we do in our audit Academy Level 1 certification course is the at the end of the rope. And just like you said, is emulating the same exact thing, but maybe at. Instead of in the middle of the rope. The nice thing about the rope is use a visual context of the line of force. So as you press the rope, you think about the. If you're in the middle of the rope and you press the rope, if the rope's hanging off both sides, it almost makes, like a Christmas tree. You know what I mean? The rope will hang to each side of your body, and you can see how that line would represent a line of force. So if you were to take the ropes all the way back to the end, walk them in just enough so there's just enough slack so that you can press it overhead, you'd see that the line of force would only go down and forward. Well, most people, they have a lack of activation or strength and range of motion in their shoulders while keeping a tall, stacked, neutral, neutral posture. And so you'd see, like, man, this would be a killer shoulder exercise that develops strength through a range of motion. Most people have a hard time with. I like kettlebells. And their offset load will help open up someone's shoulders.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right, so we've got the battle rope. And, you know, I was a little bit nervous about getting one because I wasn't quite sure where I was going to put it. But, you know, I've got in my gym that actually extends out into the hallway that goes out from my gym. And what I plan on doing in the summer, because I've only been using the battle rope for about two or three months now, is I'm going to put it out on my patio. So I know a lot of people will use something like a battle rope outside just because it, you know, obviously it takes up, like, you know, 10, 15ft of space on either side, but it Is a cool fitness tool to have in the arsenal. Another thing that you guys have, and this is. This is probably the very first. First piece of fitness gear I ever got from on it, and it's a mace. I've actually been using the mace for about a year and a half now. And I want to ask you about the history of the mace because I believe it was some kind of like an ancient warrior population or something like that that that mace training originated from. Is that correct?

Yeah, I mean, maces are, you know, medieval weaponry as far as a conditioning tool. You know, Persians and Indian wrestlers utilized. Utilize it as a conditioning tool. You'll see a traditional use of a mace. It has a lot to do with these 360s or 10 to twos. Those are the exercises that you'll traditionally see. And even now it's practiced in the middle east that in these they call a house of strength or house of power, where these guys are swinging around these extremely heavy maces that are usually concrete ends and then bamboo. Bamboo handles. And so the amount of weight displaced versus the flexibility of the handle, it's. It's a really unique approach to overhead rotational training, which I'm sure that's kind of something you probably explored with the mace is, you know, swinging it behind your back in a big arcing motion.

Yeah, you got a huge amount of shoulder mobility in order to use this. Now is this. So the mace was obviously a weapon like. Like a medieval weapon, but you said that it was used by wrestlers.

Yeah, a lot of middle eastern and Persian rush was actually maces and clubs as a training methodology that really originated in ancient persia and kind of proliferated through the middle east. So you see a lot of the swinging motions that kettlebells started popularizing swinging weight. Then clubs came on the scene early 2000 in terms of a modern club design that's a little more dense. Steel manufactured clubs and then maces been popularized recently through on it. Like you said, a lot of people are getting exposed to mace training through onit. And what's funny is a lot of this stuff, whether it's kettlebells, maces, clubs. If you look at the context historically and how it was used, and then you look at how we're trying to modernize the approach of utilizing these tools, we're making huge waves in terms of how we're systematizing the methodology. So with maces, I think a lot of people use those traditional exercises, Hanging the mace behind their head and doing a lot of these things. And you'll see a Lot of varied technique or lack thereof when people post these things on YouTube, but at the same time, I think they're missing the boat. There's a lot of ways to use this tool that would be somewhat familiar and get a varied effect because of the offset load of the. It's a subtle thing where, you know, 10, 15, 20 pound mace doesn't sound very, like very much, but with all the weight on one side, if anybody ever has done any offset barbell lifting, you. You.

Yeah.

You'd realize it doesn't take a lot of weight.

Offset barbell lifting meaning when you have like a little bit of a different weight on one side of the barbell than the other side, Right?

Yeah, that or, you know, I used to do a lot of experimentation where I put a 45 pound plate on one side and walk myself all the way over to the opposite side of the handle and then try to lift the bar, keeping it level. So a lot of what you're going to see is like, it's not just about lifting the bar, but the relationship of those angles. Can I control, can I control the horizontal relationship of the bar? The same thing with the Mace. It's subtle. Little changes in position will show whether you're weak or strong or, you know, very, very pattern on one side versus the other. So it's a great corrective tool. I think a lot people don't really see.

And for those of you haven't seen mace before, it's literally like a long handle with the, with the big chunky ball on the end of it. Doesn't have the spikes in it, unfortunately, which I think would be pretty badass. But I'm sure there are some safety implications for that. But, yeah, I mean, you can swing it, you can circle it overhead. I even have like an old tire that I got for free from the tire store that's out in my driveway. And I'll do tire slams with the mace against that. Very similar to like sledgehammer slams. And you can, you can do all sorts of weird moves, like even just like snow shoveling, for example. Literally holding the mace as you would like a shovel and pretending that you're, you're shoveling snow. So it's great cross training to get you ready for clearing the driveway if you live in a, in any of the northern regions of the US or in a snowy area. So all sorts of things that you can do with the mace. John. You ever have anybody get injured with this thing though? I mean, because honestly, it's a huge load on the shoulders. Could pretty easily drop it on your foot. I mean, have you heard about people hurting themselves with a mace before?

I'm sure there are plenty of people like you said with the barbell, with the mace. You have people with severed spinal columns because of, you know, working, you know, Olympic lifts under, under fatigue, you know, and dropping in among dropping barbells, fully load barbells on themselves. You know, anytime you're dealing with heavy metal of any type, steel, iron, shoot, I remember being a teenager and dropping a 10 pound plate on my toe, that, that hurt just about as bad as any training injury I've ever had. So yeah, I'm sure people misuse or, or are irresponsible in their uses of all of these tools and all tools in general. But I think that that's another reason why getting in person, coaching at some point in time is really important. Because we always teach, as far as coaching is concerned or as far as training is concerned, safety's number one priority. And understanding the space requirements, understanding the dynamics of the tool. With the fact that mace is in such an offset load. One of the things that I teach right off the bat is just how to pick the darn thing up. And then if you change your grip, like if you leave, take one hand off the handle. Understand if you take the hand, the hand off the handle nearest the weighted end, the opposite side is going to come around and swing because it's going to, I mean, you're not going to be able to lever the weighted end into a stable position. So if you smack yourself upside the face with the unweighted end, it's probably because you just didn't take that into account.

Yep. Yeah. And interestingly, the thing that I like most about the mace, even though that's not as much of a priority for me now that I live out in the woods and I gotta chop my own wood in the winter especially, is the fact that there's been all these studies that show that when you're kind of working with a weapon or with an extremely functional type of apparatus, you get an increase in testosterone. So you just kind of feel a little bit more macho when you use this thing. But I think it's certainly up there in terms of one of the ones that has higher injury risk potential unless you really know what you're doing on this one. So it's a cool tool though. And towards the end of this podcast, I'm going to ask you about a really good workout that you can come up with using some of the things that we're talking about, but I want to get a chance to ask you about some of the other unconventional tools that you have there too. Like you have the steel bell. Can you explain what the steel bell is and where that came from?

Yeah. You know, I didn't know the historic origin of a training tool like the steel bell until I was talking to a friend of mine, Mark Chang. He was playing around with me. He referenced. I can't give you too many specifics, but a Chinese martial arts training tool that would be used for grip and for strengthening that the steel bell essentially emulates. Of course, again, like all these other tools, they, they're made with more modern materials. So it's kind of like a wetsuit material in a circular, you know, like a circle pad, but it's full of steel shot. So they, the manufacturer of those hyperware partnered with on it to brand one of their, their tools with our primal chimp. And then, you know, we kind of collaborated on that particular steel bell project. But it's a, it's a great training tool. It's, it's so accessible to everybody. And that's one of the things that that mark was.

And what is. Can you describe it?

Yeah, it's, it's just essentially around looks like a little round, made with the same material that you'd make a wetsuit out of. Right. And this was a stretchy flexi material and it's filled with steel shot. So they come in various different weights from 10 to 50 pounds.

It's basically like a sandbag that's. That's a little bit stretchy.

It is, exactly.

Yeah. So. So what I've noticed compared to a sandbag is you can grip it like it like you can, you can hold on to it a little bit more easily. For example, like one of the things I do with it is a get up where I'll simply lay down on the ground with the steel bell at my chest and try and get up and press it overhead all in one motion. And it's really hard for a sandbag not to fall out of your hand when you're doing something like that. But it seems like the steel bell. So it's a wetsuit material, Is that what you said?

Yeah. It's the same type of material that a wetsuit would be made out of.

Yeah. It seems like it's just easier to grip.

Yeah. And then if you're doing dynamic drills with it, you're going to really work your grip quite a bit. Have you found found that been like doing any slams with it? I mean, it really is a great substitute for medicine balls and sandbags. It's kind of a funny mix between both of them in terms of functionality.

Do you know if those are waterproof?

I haven't. I haven't figured that out yet.

The reason I ask is I've been experimenting with some of these workouts that are similar to, like, the type of deep pool workouts that Laird Hamilton does, where you're literally like holding a weight to your chest and swimming across the pool underwater, trying not to touch bottom and trying not to come up for air and then going back or gripping a weight between the legs and literally like treading water back and forth across the pool while keeping your feet above the surface and your body underneath the surface. And now that you've mentioned that these steel bells are made out of like a wetsuit material, I think they might be something I could probably bring in the water and try for a workout like that too.

You know, I can definitely find out if anybody else has done it and see what type of feedback there was.

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You know, they had something called sand bells now Steel bells. And we partnered with them to brand co brand the steel bells. So. But from what I understand from a conversation I had with my buddy Mark Chang, there were training tools like all these things are mimic training tools that have been made in the past to some extent. I don't know if that was how hyperware had come up with the concept, but essentially there were little mini sandbags like this that were made for conditioning purposes for martial arts in the past. And like you said, you can use this as a substitute for a sandbag or, or like I said, a medicine ball. You can learn your, your lifts that you'd learned with a kettlebell or a sandbag with these bells. And it's really not nearly as technical because they're compact, they're dynamic, which means you don't need to use as much weight to get a similar training effect.

Right.

A 25, 30 pound steel belt might work you just as well as a, you know, 40 pound fixed weight, 50 pound fixed weight weight. And then because like you said, the grippiness of it and the, the compact nature of it, you actually are able to hold on to this thing in ways that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do a piece of steel or other things if you hit yourself with it. And it's not necessarily going to harm you either.

Yeah, yeah, Cool. Okay. And then you've got the clubs and these are, these are literally what they sound like. They look like almost bowling ball pin esque. And they come in a variety of sizes, but they're, they're clubs. What's the deal with clubs? What's the history behind those?

So clubs and maces, they both originated at the same ancient Persian training methodologies. Clubs, they used to, in the traditional sense, they used to be large wooden clubs and they would be huge. I mean, I don't know if you're a WWE fan back in the day. But they had this guy, the Iron Sheik, and he would come in with these huge wooden clubs.

Must have been either before my time or after. I wasn't interested in it anymore.

Ben, it would have to be before your time, because I'm dating myself right now, you know, but they'd be like, you know, up to 40 pounds. But they'd be huge. I mean, four feet long, you know, pieces of wood, and there'd be huge inconsistencies. And because of the dimensions of those, those more traditional clubs, like the mace that we're talking about, they're really just used for these behind the back swinging motions. And you couldn't swing them at your sides because they're so long. That would be prohibitive with these modern materials. You know, we're manufacturing our clubs out of steel, high grade steel. You have the same amount of weight in a much more compact frame. And, you know, if you think about kettlebells are very popularized kettlebells. You know, kettlebell swings, cleans, snatches. The clubs are awesome because you can do all those drills. You have a different grip configuration. So the things are literally trying to pull themselves out of your. Out of your hands as you swing them around. Right. Because the type of forces that you're generating and as you swing a club or a mace, which you're also doing, is adding tractional forces. Like, you have to hold yourself together essentially. And I think that's what you're saying about shoulder mobility. But you also get to work these drills in multiple planes. So someone like yourself does a lot of different training methodologies and puts a lot of different demands on your body. It can kind of fill the void between, you know, a traditional strength training protocol and start. Start throwing variables at you that would be hard to emulate with other tools.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that the. The clubs can do, though, is just make your head spin as you try and figure out where they're going and where they're at in space. And I know that for me, it was almost like taking a. Like a line dancing class when I was learning how to use the clubs, just because it's much more complex than, in my opinion, even like a kettlebell or, you know, or really one of these maces. It's almost like having two little maces when you're using these things. So I like the fact that you gotta think while you're using them. But I'm wondering how well these are getting adopted in, like, sports where there's a swing component or a shoulder mobility Component like, do you see swimmers using these type of things or tennis players? Or have you seen that these type of athletes are successfully adopting something like clubs or are they still just more of kind of like a martial arts type of thing?

You know, it's really interesting because clubs have been around, these modern incarnations of clubs been around since around 2000 and they haven't seemed to take off in terms of the same way that kettlebells have, because kettlebells.

Because there's a learning curve probably, huh?

There's a very steep learning curve. So it's also because there haven't been a lot of systems out there to try to bring a sound approach to introducing people to them. You know, I had, through working here at Oneida, had some gentlemen from a professional baseball team come in and they were interested in the clubs. Of course, they wanted to pick up the club and swing it like a baseball bat, which doesn't work when it's £25. You know, it's probably not a good idea swinging around like a baseball basket. So much force generated in the club inevitably wants to fly out of your hands like we were talking about before. And you know, so what happened was we ended up breaking down the mechanics and the. One of the gentlemen that was, was there, he, he had talked about how he had pre existing shoulder issues, which obviously probably pretty common in that sport. And a lot of people think, you know, clubs are just going to like increase shoulder mobility. But it's what you're trying to do is you're accelerating and decelerating that club through the range of motion. So you're not just trying to increase range of motion, you're trying to increase your ability to stay grounded and dissipate force through that range of motion. So it's so awesome for throwing sports for, for people who are doing martial arts. Like you said, punchers, you know, any type of deal where you need to develop strength of not just muscle, but connective tissue and through a great range of motion, it has great potential as a therapeutic modality. If done light, you can develop some serious strength and conditioning. And what most people don't realize is if you use the clubs appropriately and you understand what context you're trying to, they can be killer leg conditioning tools.

Yeah, yeah. Now do you get much, much kind of resistance from the traditional strength training community? I mean, you've got, you know, people who are, who are really like dye in the wool. Traditional strength coaches. Like we've had Dan John on the podcast before and like all of his mass made simple stuff is basically just barbell complexes or, you know, you've got, like, Mark Ripato with starting strength, whereas, you know, very big focus on just that one piece of fitness equipment, the barbell. And, you know, like. Like a lot of these Russian or German strength training programs almost seem to scoff at the idea of using all these extraneous tools or these things that are just basically maybe a sign that you have a weak mind and that you get too bored with, like, the traditional strength training stuff. And so you got to go throw all this extra stuff into the mix, you know, kind of. Kind of the same way that a lot of times biohackers get poked fun at, because why not just go to sleep rather than using a sleep mask and the sleep supplements and lighting and electrical stimulation and all that jazz. What's your take on this? I mean, what do you say when somebody says, hey, all you need is a barbell?

I think that ultimately it depends on what your goals are. I mean, if your goal is to move heavy weight, then you move heavy weight. You know, you move progressively larger loads, and there's not a better tool to do that than the progressively loaded barbell. That's the strength of that tool. If you want to move weight dynamically in a consistent fashion, that you would use barbells in a lot of ways in that plane, then kettlebells really have made a name for themselves for that. And at this point in time, people like Dan John, of course, if we refer back to him, he's big in the kettlebell scene as well.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I should have mentioned that. Yeah, he's definitely got a lot of kettlebell stuff out there as well.

Definitely, definitely. And, you know, it's about the context in which we're all operating, too. Say someone like. Like Danjon, who's working with collegiate athletes. It's about resource management and time management and doing what you know, as well. We've. We've gotten a lot more interest from a variety of different professional sports teams. Strength coaches that, you know, are having to weigh out constantly. You know, the fact that they have limited resources and time and energy, and they have to mitigate risk. So doing what, you know, and just working within these quantifiable Measuring. Measuring, you know, easy to quantify ways of measuring progress. It works. It works well for a lot of these guys. And for a lot of them, they're. They're judging progress based on one. One variable, right?

Yep. Yeah. And, I mean, I. I don't. Did you see the. The study that came out last year that compared traditional strength training like deadlift, squat and clean and jerk with strongman style training. And they were using like log lifts and farmer walks and sled pulls and like an axle press and like a lot of the stuff that you'll see folks doing on like the World's Strongest man competition on tv. And they were comparing that with basic barbell lifts. And I think they had the single arm row in there as well as a dumbbell lift, but they were basically comparing the effect on strength and power and they found that this kind of weird, unconventional strongman style training in many cases gave the equivalent effect or even beat out the traditional exercises.

Yeah, I mean, there's those variables that most of us are not trying to measure, and I think that's what most people have a hard time wrapping their head around, is that as far as fitness is concerned, our biggest influence in our culture still at this point in time, we're still kind of moving out of that whole bodybuilding influence into this new functional training thing, which CrossFit has been a big part of. And then that opens the doors to a lot of new opportunities. People are starting to look at new ways to get the job done, jobs done that they're looking for, you know, if you're looking for aesthetics, if you're looking for performance, if, if you're looking for to excel at adventure racing, if you're. They're all different goals. And you know, I think that ultimately if we just say, hey, no matter what your goal is, you should be in there lifting barbells exclusively. I think we're doing a big disservice to a lot of people. I love, I love barbell training. I do conventional lifts. You know, like any given day cold, without a warm up, I can go pull two and a half times my body weight. I could probably work up to, you know, three times body weight lift if I actually put myself on a program to do that. In terms of a RAW deadlift.

Yeah. Did you know that's actually a program, the cold lift program, where literally like twice a day you're just walking in cold and lifting extremely heavy weight and walking away. Have you seen this program before?

I haven't, but it sounds like something I like.

I do a little bit of a variation on that. I'm only using about like 60 to 70% of 1 RM, but I just keep a loaded barbell in the, in the home gym that's next to my office and just go in there a few times a day and lift it one or Two times just to keep the posterior chain and the glutes activated and to get that, that supposed surgeon testosterone and growth hormone that can occur when you're occasionally lifting heavy things. You know, I don't go in there and warm up or anything. You just bend down, take a deep breath, make sure your form is good, lift it off the ground, set it down, maybe do it one more time and then walk away and go on with your day's activities. So that, yeah, this, this cold lift kind of has something to it when it comes to just like, you know, greasing the groove, right?

Greasing the groove is a huge concept. I mean, Pavel Satzlini was one of the people who got me into the unconventional fitness scene, you know, back in the early 2000s. That's how I got into kettlebell lifting. That's how I kind of inadvertently found, you know, club training. And it's been a big part of my journey. And so, like, the Power to the People program that he wrote up is all about greasing the groove, man. I went from, you know, never deadlifting to deadlifting, you know, 450 pounds in the course of a couple months, slept on slabs of meat. And so, you know, I love barbell lifting. I do a lot of unconventional barbell lifting. Single arm pressing, windmills, two hands anyhows, offset loaded barbell training. I love it all. I think that ultimately we just have to, you know, as coaches, if, if we're using all these different tools, we just have to understand the benefit and then the risk to reward ratio for whatever we're selecting to do. Like you said, should everybody swing a mace around their head? Probably not, but there's a lot of different ways to use a mace that don't involve swinging. You know, it's essentially a long barbell, a fat barbell handle with the weight on one side. If you look at it that way, you can use. It could be accessible to anybody. And our maces start at £7. A barbell starts at 25ish pounds. You know, for a lot of people.

That was one of the first, first books I ever read. When I was getting out of bodybuilding about nine years ago was Pavel's book. I believe it was Power to the People. It was whichever one that really focuses on greasing the groove. Body weight exercises, pistols, stuff like that. And I remember challenging myself to not go into the gym for a month because I'd been living in the gym for the past two years as a bodybuilder, and I simply walked over to the park across the street from my house. And it was just me and my body. And that was my first introduction to Paavo's style of training. And I kept things incredibly simplistic and got into amazing shape, like better shape than I was in when I was bodybuilding. I lost some muscle mass. Right. But my functional ability to move exploded through the roof. And that was kind of like my first introduction to what we're talking about today. Right. Unconventional training.

Yeah, man. I mean, I think that we can get great results down all these different paths. And essentially, you know, you talked about, you know, kind of going very simplistic. It was pistols and single arm push ups. I believe that was the training protocol for that. That book and the one before that was deadlifts and single arm overhead pressing, you know, for Pavel. And that simplistic approach, I think, is so great because it shows people that they don't have to do a million things all at once to get great results. But I think that what we're doing at the academy is demonstrating that there's more than just the body weight or the barbell or the kettlebell. There's a lot of different ways that we can go down a very similar path where we can focus on developing some skill, strength, and new attributes. And I think ideally, you know, you can invest a good chunk of time into any one of these, into any one of these implements, tools, or methodologies and get a great return on investment. Yeah. And then you can choose another path as well.

Now, let's just finish with something fun here as far as everything we've talked about, right? Kettlebells, battle ropes, maces, steel bells, clubs. Let's say you're like me and you've got a little bit of each of these things in your, in your home gym, or somebody is going to go to, you know, like in the show notes for, for this episode@BenGreenfieldFitness.com WeirdGear I've got links to all the things that we talked about, and let's just say you wanted to go spend a few hundred dollars and kind of like create your own new home gym. So somebody's sitting around, they've got all this stuff, like in their basement or in their backyard or in their training studio or whatever. What's an example of a good full body workout that someone could do that you like, that kind of implements each of these components.

So all the different tools.

Yeah, let's do it. Let's give folks a workout that uses each of these different tools.

Wow. That's definitely going to be a killer workout. So a lot of times what we do in our programming is we'll always include a full body joint mobility warm up. So just kind of go through the way that we teach it at the very least and kind of honor that as much as possible. Then we'll have some movement prep stuff that kind of closed chain mobility stuff that'll help people get into better position because position is, you know, your strength is dependent upon your position or ability to get into a strong position. We could do a strength component thereafter which call our primary set whatever we're focusing on for that particular program or that particular day. In this case, maybe we work on offset barbell deadlifts just because it's unconventional, but at the same time it's using something familiar. Then thereafter we can do a conditioning set. This is where we might add in some variability in this case. Let's look at the mace. There's an awesome program. It's really easy to follow along. It's every minute on the minute protocol that we would that we like to play. So every minute there's, there's a circuit of work that has to be completed. If you guys are interested in finding out more, this Viking Warrior mace float one of our head coaches here on it. And it's is vicious and simple. So I think that's a great way to look at that. It'll pretty much destroy your legs altogether.

What'd you call it?

The Viking Warrior mace flow.

Viking Warrior mace flow. So do you guys have a video of that at the academy?

We do, yeah.

I'll find a link and I'll put it in the show notes for people.

Yeah, and if you have a hard time finding it, I'll make sure I'll shoot. I'll have them film it for you. So and for your listeners, I think they'd have a lot of fun with it. And the nice thing about it is it's, it's a full, full conditioning program using nothing but a relatively light base. And I think it'll open a lot of people's eyes about how powerful that simple looking tool can be because it's all about accelerating, decelerating and controlling rotational rotations. So it's really surprisingly brutal and effective. And then given that we had the offset deadlifts, we had the mace kind of work and then we probably want to finish off with like an upper body finisher. So being able to do some, some time sets of jerks. Because even though the mace is generally thought of as an upper body conditioning Tool. That particular program is designed to destroy the lower body, so adding some pushing into the mix to finish off the round out the program. So push press.

Like doing some presses with the steel.

Bell, for example, or steel bell or kettlebell in particular. Yeah, definitely. I was thinking more kettlebell push presses or jerks on time intervals to finish off the mix. And then we generally also include in every workout program specific, we call them decompression exercises. So just thinking about the exercises you've done and make sure that the body can kind of unload itself so that, say, if you went for the run the next day, you weren't out of whack or, you know, less optimized to go ahead and do everything else you might want to do the next day.

Right.

Because two tense in one area of the body or the other.

Right, right.

So. So we use all the tools, but kind of threw a couple different things in the mix there.

Yeah. So, for example, you know, another thing I was thinking was I. And. And I've been experimenting with this a little bit is you could use the clubs as like a way to almost warm up the shoulders. Right. Like get some shoulder mobility, get the brain turned on. And then, you know, I also like the battle rope as a finisher as well, like as a cardiovascular finisher. That's something I've been using for my workouts, is I'll get through the whole workout and then just do like a tabata set of battle rope slams to finish off some of the kettlebell and the mace and the steel bell work. So I kind of like that for. For dessert, if you will, at the end. But yeah, there's a lot of ways you can mix these things up. Obviously it's pretty fun and the sky's the limit. But like we mentioned earlier in, I mean, make sure that you educate yourself on proper form too. Probably the easiest one in terms of form, I'd say, is the battle rope, because you pretty much just start swinging it and it kind of flows right away. But the rest of this stuff, I mean, you guys have your academy down there in Austin, obviously, John and I know folks can visit there for classes and things of that nature. But there are a lot of instructors spread out across the US and across the world, really, that are offering things like kettlebell certs and who are versed in some of these unconventional training tools. So make sure that if you really want to. Want to do these things properly, invest in your body, invest in your brain, take the time to hook up with a good instructor and learn these things. But ultimately I'm a fan. Like I'm a big fan and I know that these things have made my workouts a lot more fun. So I'm happy to get you on John to talk about them. So thanks for sharing some of this stuff with us.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Ben. And I look forward to having you out for a visit in Austin. Are you going to be out here for Paleo this year?

Yeah, I'll be. Both myself and my wife are speaking at Paleo FX and we're going to be sticking around Austin for a couple of days. So we are going to be over at the Onnit Academy and we'll probably for for the Ben Greenfield fitness listeners and fans will shoot some videos for you guys and maybe even do a podcast down there onit AC so you can look forward to some more stuff and maybe see me and John, I don't know, throwing the mace around or swinging some clubs. And I'll try not to beat you up too much when I come down there, John.

All right. I appreciate it.

All right. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield, John Wolfe, the director of fitness education for the ONIT Academy, signing out. And you can check out the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com WeirdGear thanks for listening in.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.