Dragon Door Australia

If you're reading this chances are you know how great Hardstyle kettlebell training can be. But how do you explain it to others?

Ever do something and know instantly it was a bad idea?

Earlier this year I was spending a lot of time on barbell training and was training regularly at an Olympic weightlifting club close by. It was one of the best finds of my training career - elite level coaches and training partners, great atmosphere and just around the corner. To begin with things were going just fine. I was gaining skill at the movements, my lifts were going up and my body felt good.

Then one day it just didn't anymore. My hips were starting to play up. I'd never had any real issues before with them so this was odd. On top of that one of my knees started going funny too (the knee has been caused by a different issue to the hip and I will address this separately in a future blog). Looking at what I was doing it wasn't surprising something gave out. I have a great history of hurting myself when I push hard. Unlike a clever person though I was on a roll with training so instead of backing off I tried to train my way through it. By the time I set a new PR in the Squat, Snatch and Clean my hips were so sore I couldn't get out of a chair without pain. A simple drive in traffic would leave me sore for hours. When I went to the MMI in San Diego in February I had decided to stop full Olympic lifts and squatting until I had figured out the cause.

I received some good advice from Master RKC Geoff Neupert at the MMI which boiled down to "quit being an idiot and train in a way that doesn't hurt you". I appreciated the honesty and when I came home organised for a cortisone shot to be done under ultrasound. A lot of people have a lot of negative stuff to say about cortisone but I'll be honest - I think it's magic. Within days the pain had gone and I was starting to be able to get around better.

What I learned was invaluable. I have never been a comfortable squatter despite my life long love of the exercise. As it turns out I am simply not built for them. Without going too deeply into the anatomy of my hip structure the way I am constructed allows my hip joint to be aggravated when I am in a deep squat. This is exacerbated when speed is added such as in the catch of a full snatch or a heavy squat. The MRI showed old damage over the years with the doctor telling me that I should quit running (no problem), minimise jumping, squatting, lunging and even skipping. Basically anything that either put me into deep hip flexion or had much impact in it.

That was February. Fast forward to now and it's been nine months of slow work gaining mobility and flexibility, re grooving squatting and...some other stuff.

The other stuff is the important thing, the subject of this blog. Again, on advice from Geoff Neupert I bought an eBook written by some RKC colleagues of mine titled Becoming Bulletproof. What Tim and Mike have done with this is a useful guide to how to integrate the FMS rolling and crawling patterns, essential for core stability, into daily training. The addition of these drills into my daily warm up took only a few minutes - in fact I would crawl a lap of the Dragon Door Australia facility and then do three rolls each way for each limb (get the book to understand what I mean). That's probably about three minutes effort.

What impact did the Becoming Bulletproof drills have on me? Given I couldn't even walk pain free at the start of the year (but did have a new squat PR to show for it...) getting around pain free now is a blessing. Really makes me appreciate small things and find joy in even being able to perform simple things like Goblet Squats pain free. I won't lie and say that the BB drills have somehow fixed decades old damage in my hips or that they were responsible for getting rid of the pain as both of those things are impossible. But they have helped my hips function properly and remain pain free. The slight medical intervention did its job and reduced pain and inflammation allowing the drills to do their job. What is funny about this is that the drills are for core stability and I ace them on the FMS test. So the drills don't give me better function in moving. But they have obviously had a deeper effect on my body and reminded my body of something it was supposed to be doing and clearly wasn't anymore.

The proof is in my movement. While hardly an impressive squat the picture above is of me squatting with 60kg yesterday for three sets of five. Good depth, no pain today (except in my legs which have been largely unused for the last nine months) and everything feels as it should after a squat session - tight and muscularly sore without pain or discomfort. Tim has been very supportive in this journey and I can't thank Mike and him enough for making something that is quite complex and complicated so easy to follow and integrate into my training. It has taught me a lot - that I need to make sure to keep movement drills in my training and as such have actually added in small amounts of light plyometric work, large amounts of active mobility drills and even some running drills as parts of my warm up. All of our clients at Dragon Door Australia are forced to use these drills as they turn up in class often and the results are starting to be shown - better core activation gives better results. It sounds so obvious that I think many miss it. Between the rolling and crawling Becoming Bulletproof drills, my shoulder and active leg raise drills that need to be done as well as some Get Ups my warm ups allow me to still train reasonably hard despite the years of accumulated injuries and my age.

If you're looking for something that you feel is missing from your training Becoming Bulletproof could well be it. Simple to use, well thought out, clearly explains key issues without getting bogged down in science and downright cheap too! To Tim and Mike, as well as Geoff Neupert who put me onto it in the first place, I want to say thanks very much guys. I hope to crack a 100kg squat by end of year again.

It's funny that when people first start to get into kettlebells that everyone tells them they should focus on the kettlebell swing. I'm going to come right out and say it - there's a fair chance that if you're new to kettlebells that is the wrong place to start.

Melbourne is the center of Australian kettlebell training. With workshops run regularly from Dragon Door Australia's HQ in Moorabbin you have more chance to attend top level events than in anywhere else in the country. And in October we've got everything you could need to increase your knowledge and improve your training!